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Changes in influenza’s genome pairs may predict evolution of flu virus
Kryazhimskiy S. PLoS Genet. 2011;doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1001301.
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Statistical analysis of where influenza genome mutations occur may predict which strains of the virus are likely to be prevalent, researchers found.
Using 40 years of flu genome data compiled from the Influenza Virus Resource at the National Center for Biotechnology Information and the Protein Data Bank at the Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics, researchers completed a statistical analysis of the occurrence of pairs of genetic mutations. A mutation in one-half of the pair often signaled that a mutation was about to occur elsewhere on the genome, researchers said.
“The first mutation might be useless on its own, but it might be a prerequisite for the second mutation to be useful,” said Joshua Plotkin, PhD, the Martin Meyerson Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and researcher on the project. “If you know that Site A interacts epistatically, and you observe a mutation in Site A this year, then you can predict with some accuracy that Site B will mutate within the next several years.”
Because these epistatic pairs tend to affect the flu’s virility levels, this predictive ability can help vaccine manufacturers prepare for future flu epidemics, according to Plotkin.
“If you could understand the mechanisms that are responsible for the types of evolution that occur, you could maybe choose that strain more accurately, meaning you could have a better match every season between the vaccine strain and the prevalent strain of flu,” he said in a press release, adding that it would also be possible to predict future strains of the virus that currently do not exist.
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