Key result
Adaptation of Coxsackievirus B3 to a less permissive cellular environment occurred through the selection of a dominant mutation followed by group selection of minority variants that together conferred a population fitness increase.
Virus adaptation and fitness in a new environment are determined by the cooperative contribution of a group of minority variants rather than a single dominant genotype.
Challenges single-genotype models of viral fitness; leaves open relevance to human enteroviral disease.
Understanding how a pathogen colonizes and adapts to a new host environment is a primary aim in studying emerging infectious diseases. Adaptive mutations arise among the thousands of variants generated during RNA virus infection, and identifying these variants will shed light onto how changes in tropism and species jumps can occur. Here, we adapted Coxsackie virus B3 to a highly permissive and less permissive environment. Using deep sequencing and bioinformatics, we identified a multi-step adaptive process to adaptation involving residues in the receptor footprints that correlated with receptor availability and with increase in virus fitness in an environment-specific manner. We show that adaptation occurs by selection of a dominant mutation followed by group selection of minority variants that together, confer the fitness increase observed in the population, rather than selection of a single dominant genotype.
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Bordería et al. (2015) studied Coxsackievirus B3 infection (in vitro). Serial passage in A549 cells vs. Serial passage in HeLa cells or wildtype virus was evaluated on Virus fitness and genetic diversity. Adaptation of Coxsackievirus B3 to a less permissive cellular environment occurred through the selection of a dominant mutation followed by group selection of minority variants that together conferred a population fitness increase.
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