Key result
Influenza A virus coding regions in segments 1, 5, 7, and 8 exhibit host-specific global ordered RNA structure, with avian strains generally having the most stable predicted free energies.
May inform avian influenza surveillance; leaves open whether RNA stability influences zoonotic risk or human virulence.
Influenza A is a significant public health threat, partially because of its capacity to readily exchange gene segments between different host species to form novel pandemic strains. An understanding of the fundamental factors providing species barriers between different influenza hosts would facilitate identification of strains capable of leading to pandemic outbreaks and could also inform vaccine development. Here, we describe the difference in predicted RNA secondary structure stability that exists between avian, swine and human coding regions. The results predict that global ordered RNA structure exists in influenza A segments 1, 5, 7 and 8, and that ranges of free energies for secondary structure formation differ between host strains. The predicted free energy distributions for strains from avian, swine, and human species suggest criteria for segment reassortment and strains that might be ideal candidates for viral attenuation and vaccine development.
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Priore et al. (2012) studied Influenza A. Host species (avian, swine, human) was evaluated on Predicted RNA secondary structure stability (z-scores and free energies). Influenza A virus coding regions in segments 1, 5, 7, and 8 exhibit host-specific global ordered RNA structure, with avian strains generally having the most stable predicted free energies.
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