Title Molecular evolutionary analyses of the fusion protein gene in human respirovirus 1.
Author Takahashi, Tomoko; Akagawa, Mao; Kimura, Ryusuke; Sada, Mitsuru; Shirai, Tatsuya; Okayama, Kaori; Hayashi, Yuriko; Kondo, Mayumi; Takeda, Makoto; Ryo, Akihide; Kimura, Hirokazu
Journal Virus Res Publication Year/Month 2023-Aug
PMID 37270034 PMCID -N/A-
Affiliation + expend 1.Iwate Prefectural Research Institute for Environmental Science and Public Health, Morioka-shi, Iwate 020-0857, Japan.

Few evolutionary studies of the human respiratory virus (HRV) have been conducted, but most of them have focused on HRV3. In this study, the full-length fusion (F) genes in HRV1 strains collected from various countries were subjected to time-scaled phylogenetic, genome population size, and selective pressure analyses. Antigenicity analysis was performed on the F protein. The time-scaled phylogenetic tree using the Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo method estimated that the common ancestor of the HRV1 F gene diverged in 1957 and eventually formed three lineages. Phylodynamic analyses showed that the genome population size of the F gene has doubled over approximately 80 years. Phylogenetic distances between the strains were short (< 0.02). No positive selection sites were detected for the F protein, whereas many negative selection sites were identified. Almost all conformational epitopes of the F protein, except one in each monomer, did not correspond to the neutralising antibody (NT-Ab) binding sites. These results suggest that the HRV1 F gene has constantly evolved over many years, infecting humans, while the gene may be relatively conserved. Mismatches between computationally predicted epitopes and NT-Ab binding sites may be partially responsible for HRV1 reinfection and other viruses such as HRV3 and respiratory syncytial virus.

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