Abstract
Reassortment within the influenza virus—the swapping and exchange of entire gene segments can create entirely novel strains and has been implicated in virtually every pandemic or major outbreak. However, while individual transfer events have been documented or reconstructed, broad comparative studies are lacking. Here I identify, enumerate and compare reassortment events across different epidemiological compartments by measuring conflicting phylogenetic signal within very large genomic datasets taken from avian, human and swine hosted strains. I show that reassortment is not restricted to antigenic genes, specific hosts or strains, but present across all compartments. However the rate of reassortment varies across the datasets, especially in association with host species. I conclude that influence surveillance should focus on avian populations and that more attention is needed to the evolution of non-antigenic genes.
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Agapow, PM. (2012). Horizontal Gene Transfer in Influenza Strain Generation: A Comparative Evolutionary Study. In: Pontarotti, P. (eds) Evolutionary Biology: Mechanisms and Trends. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30425-5_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-30425-5_12
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