Selection on haemagglutinin imposes a bottleneck during mammalian transmission of reassortant H5N1 influenza viruses

Peter R. Wilker, Jorge M. Dinis, Gabriel Starrett, Masaki Imai, Masato Hatta, Chase W. Nelson, David H. O’Connor, Austin L. Hughes, Gabriele Neumann, Yoshihiro Kawaoka and Thomas C. Friedrich ()
Additional contact information
Peter R. Wilker: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Jorge M. Dinis: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Gabriel Starrett: University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
Masaki Imai: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Masato Hatta: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Chase W. Nelson: University of South Carolina
David H. O’Connor: University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
Austin L. Hughes: University of South Carolina
Gabriele Neumann: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Yoshihiro Kawaoka: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine
Thomas C. Friedrich: University of Wisconsin School of Veterinary Medicine

Nature Communications, 2013, vol. 4, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract The emergence of human-transmissible H5N1 avian influenza viruses poses a major pandemic threat. H5N1 viruses are thought to be highly genetically diverse both among and within hosts; however, the effects of this diversity on viral replication and transmission are poorly understood. Here we use deep sequencing to investigate the impact of within-host viral variation on adaptation and transmission of H5N1 viruses in ferrets. We show that, although within-host genetic diversity in haemagglutinin (HA) increases during replication in inoculated ferrets, HA diversity is dramatically reduced upon respiratory droplet transmission, in which infection is established by only 1–2 distinct HA segments from a diverse source virus population in transmitting animals. Moreover, minor HA variants present in as little as 5.9% of viruses within the source animal become dominant in ferrets infected via respiratory droplets. These findings demonstrate that selective pressures acting during influenza virus transmission among mammals impose a significant bottleneck.

Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms3636 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:4:y:2013:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms3636

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms3636

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().