Evolution of the capsid protein genes of foot-and-mouth disease virus: antigenic variation without accumulation of amino acid substitutions over six decades

Abstract

This report a The three groups given correspond to isolates of serotype C from Europe, South America, and The Philippines, in chronological order; c indicates that the virus was plaque purified.

Interaction of virus populations with their hosts

“…Thus, antibody escape through amino acid substitutions in this loop must be compatible with receptor recognition. This explains the limited repertoire of amino acid substitutions at this multifunctional loop among field isolates and laboratory populations of FMDV (Martínez et al, 1992;Borrego et al, 1993;Mateu, 1995) (Section 4.4).…”

Understanding the molecular epidemiology of foot-and-mouth-disease virus

“…The virus strain with the higher basic reproductive rate will overtake the less-virulent, but finally end in a stage of equilibrium (Alexopoulou and Dourakis, 2005;Mao et al, 2001;Miralles et al, 1999;Sitia et al, 2001). Evolution experiments in vitro (Domingo et al, 2002;Domingo et al, 2005a,b,c;Martinez et al, 1992Martinez et al, , 1991Martinez et al, , 1997Villaverde et al, 1991) demonstrate FMDV's capability of survival, despite accumulation of mutations upon repeated bottleneck events (where population size is greatly reduced by a catastrophe). Therefore, a range of mutation rate must have evolved to ensure a continuous heterogeneity to find population subsets that can invade cells after bottleneck events and staying below the errorthreshold.…”

Long-term virus evolution in nature

“…Families of DNAdependent DNA polymerases group some bacterial and bacteriophage DNA polymerases with some eukaryotic polymerases (Morse, 1994;Villarreal, 2005), in support of the active exchange of modules during coevolution of viruses and their hosts (Botstein, 1980(Botstein, , 1981Zimmern, 1988). In contrast to conserved genes, variable genes (typically, capsid proteins and surface glycoproteins) serve to establish shortterm evolutionary relationships within the same virus group, including the survey of virus variation during outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics (Gorman et al, 1992;Martínez et al, 1992;Morse, 1994;Gavrilin et al, 2000).…”