Trends in global warming and evolution of polymerase basic protein 2 family from influenza a virus

Abstract

Both global warming and influenza trouble humans in varying ways, therefore it is important to study the trends in both global warming and evolution of influenza A virus, in particular, proteins from influenza A virus. Recently, we have conducted two studies along this line to determine the trends between global warming and polymerase acidic protein as well as matrix protein 2. Although these two studies reveal some interesting findings, many studies are still in need because at least there are ten different proteins in influenza A virus. In this study, we analyze the trends in global warming and evolution of polymerase basic protein 2 (PB2) from influenza A virus. The PB2 evolution from 1956 to 2008 was defined using the unpredictable portion of amino-acid pair. Then the trend in this evolution was compared with the trend in the global temperature, the temperature in north and south hemispheres, and the temperature in influenza A virus sampling site and species carrying influenza A virus. The results show the similar trends in global warming and in PB2 evolution, which are in good agreement with our previous studies in polymerase acidic protein and matrix protein 2 from influenza A virus.

Adaptation in polymerase basic protein 1 family from influenza A virus to climate change

“…On the other hand, the human and swine were generally localized, thus the present results indicate the potential impact of climate change on the adaptation of influenza A viruses. On the other hands, the results in this study furthermore support our several previous studies on other proteins of influenza A viruses [8][9][10][11][12][13]. Nevertheless, more studies are needed in order to better understand these two important issues in front of humans.…”

“…At the level of protein, adaptation can refer to features in a protein family, for example, the amino acid composition changes in protein family along the time course. In agreement with our previous studies along this line [8][9][10][11][12][13], we used the amino-acid pair predictability as a measure to present PB1's adaptation along the time course [22].…”

“…In the past, we studied the adaptation of influenza A viruses to temperature changes with respect to their six proteins, hemagglutinin, neuraminidase, nucleoprotein, polymerase acidic protein, polymerase basic protein 2, and matrix protein 2 [8][9][10][11][12][13]. However, there are ten or eleven different proteins in influenza A viruses according to different strains, so it is necessary to study the adaptations in the remaining proteins from influenza A viruses in order to get a whole picture.…”

Trends in Global Warming and Evolution of Nucleoproteins from Influenza A Viruses since 1918

“…We use the amino acid pair predictability to represent the evolution of nucleoprotein along the time course as we did in our previous studies (Yan and Wu, 2009a,b,c; Yan et al., 2010) in order to maintain the same approach in these studies. The amino acid pair predictability is computed as in the following examples:…”

“…While we would not expect the relationship between global warming and evolution of influenza A virus to be clearly visible, we may be able to detect indirect consequences. We have conducted several studies to explore the potential impact of global warming on the evolution of several types of proteins from influenza A virus (Yan and Wu, 2009a,b,c; Yan et al., 2010). However, it is necessary to conduct further studies not only because there are ten types of proteins in influenza A virus, and each type of protein plays a different role in influenza A virus survival, but also more importantly we should systematically study all the proteins from a particular virus in order to obtain a comprehensive picture.…”