Evidence Obtained from anova to Reason Cross-species Infection and Cross-subtype Mutation in Neuraminidases of Influenza A Viruses

Abstract

The current pandemic of A/H1N1 influenza raises a serious question on cross-species infection and cross-subtype mutation because our previous focus on possible influenza pandemic laid on H5N1 subtype and the cross-species infection between avian and human. In this study, we analyse 3874 neuraminidases from influenza A viruses using anova to answer the question of if there is barrier between species and between subtypes. The results show that there is no cross-species barrier in some species, and the intra-species variation is larger than the inter-species variation in some species hosting the viruses, and the cross-subtype mutation is possible because there is no cross-subtype barrier in some subtypes and the intra-subtype variation is larger than the inter-subtype variation in some subtypes. These results highlight the state of barrier of influenza A virus, which can help us understand the current pandemic and manufacture more effective vaccines.

Possible Reason for Cross-Species and Cross-Subtype Reassortment in Polymerase Basic Protein 2 from Influenza A Virus

“…In combining with our previous studies [8][9][10][11][12], we can better understand the underlying reason for cross-species infection and cross-subtype reassortment, i.e. although there is a barrier, which would prevent the cross-species infection and cross-subtype reassortment, between species and between subtypes in some cases (top four panels in Figure 1), a mutation/reassortment would easily lead a PB2 protein to jump from species to species or from subtype to subtype, because the intra-subtype/species variation is larger than the inter-subtype/species variation.…”

“…Thus we use the amino-acid pair predictability to convert PB2 proteins into numbers in agreement with our previous studies along this research line [8][9][10][11][12].…”

“…This question is important because the reassortment particularly facilitates the generation of pandemic and epidemic strains, which led to the pandemics in 1957 *Address correspondence to this author at the State Key Laboratory of Nonfood Biomass Enzyme Technology, National Engineering Research Center for Non-food Biorefinery, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Biorefinery, Guangxi Academy of Sciences, 98 Daling Road, Nanning, Guangxi, 530007, China; Tel: +86-771-2503930; Fax: +86-771-2503999; E-mail: hongguanglishibahao@yahoo.com and 1968 [1], the highly pathological H5N1 outbreaks [2][3][4], and the current H1N1 pandemic [5][6][7]. Among ten proteins from influenza A viruses, we have studied this question with respect to the hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, polymerase acidic protein, matrix protein 1 and 2 [8][9][10][11][12], which bioinformatically reveal the underlined mechanism for the crossspecies infection and cross-subtype reassortment. However, more studies are needed along this research line in order to get a full picture for ten proteins from influenza A viruses.…”

Evolutionary evidence on suitability of SecD as a target for development of antibacterial agents against Staphylococcus aureus

“…Model II ANOVA in SigmaStat (Systat Software ) was used to partition the variance of p ‐distance in terms of inter‐ (between) phyla, classes, orders, families, genera, and intra‐ (within) phylum, class, order, family, genus, because of its particular suitability (Sokal and Rohlf ; Wu et al. ; Yan and Wu , ,b, , ,b).…”

Small Variations Between Species/Subtypes Attributed to Reassortment Evidenced from Polymerase Basic Protein 1 with Other Seven Proteins from Influenza A Virus

“…Under this circumstance, it is appropriate and safe to analyse the available data to answer the above question. Therefore, studies have been conducted to address this question related to seven proteins from influenza A viruses (Yan and Wu, 2009a,b, 2010a,b, 2011a,b; Yan et al, 2010), and the results showed that the variations within host species/subtype were larger than the variations between host species/subtypes, which suggested that influenza A virus could use the proteins from other species and subtypes rather than its own. These findings further suggested that the reassortment in influenza A viruses has the tendency to form new strains, which would lead to cross‐species infection although we did not find this to any degree when we worked on them.…”