img not found
Communications

They reconstruct for the first time the evolutionary history of AIDS, hepatitis and influenza viruses from the interaction between the parts of the genome

Event

Investigation & Education

Thesis

They reconstruct for the first time the evolutionary history of AIDS, hepatitis and influenza viruses from the interaction between the parts of the genome

Fernando González, professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia and researcher at the Joint Infection and Public Health Unit of FISABIO-UV. (those that use ribonucleic acid as genetic material) according to the way in which certain parts of the genome interact. The research, published in the journal 'Genome Biology and Evolution', explains that this interaction – which they call secondary structure – is key to understanding how AIDS, influenza or hepatitis viruses have evolved. </strong></p><p>“The main novelty of this work is the statistically rigorous comparison between different mathematical models that help us to reconstruct the history and evolutionary relationships between RNA viruses,” explains Fernando González, from the University of Valencia. These evolutionary relationships are important because of their usefulness when it comes to understanding the mechanisms of action of viruses and being able to alleviate their negative consequences for both humans and crops.</p><p>The research also allows us to understand “with much greater precision the way in which RNA viruses evolve from their hereditary material,” points out the researcher from the Joint Infection and Public Health Unit of the Foundation for the Promotion of Health and Biomedical Research (FISABIO). Among these viruses are human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), hepatitis C, or influenza.</p><p>

The research, in which Juan Ángel Patiño has also participated and Oliver G. Pybus, has been done computer-wise, comparing evolutionary reconstructions of parts of the genome with different mathematical models of evolution, some of which consider the secondary structure and the restrictions it imposes on change, and the others that do not impose these restrictions. Usually, in this type of studies the secondary structure of viruses was ignored, but this project has taken it into account to extract valuable information. As the professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia explains, “these interactions are what we call secondary structure and represent an additional level of action of selection at the molecular level that is not usually considered in the reconstruction of the evolutionary history of these viruses.”

Fernando González's main research focuses on evolutionary genetics, evolutionary and molecular epidemiology, molecular and systems genomics, bioinformatics and conservation biology. For his part, Juan Ángel Patiño, now a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University in New York (United States), develops his current research in the application of phylogenetic methods to the analysis of the evolution of viruses.

Article:

Juan Ángel Patiño-Galindo, Fernando González-Candelas, Oliver G Pybus; «The Effect of RNA Substitution Models where Viroid and RNA Virus Phylogenies», Genome Biology and Evolution, Volume 10, Issue 2, 1 February 2018, Pages 657–666, https://doi.org/10.1093/gbe/evx273

Share on social networks