Adaptive evolution by recombination is not associated with increased mutation rates in Maize streak virus

BMC Evolutionary Biology

Research Article

Arvind Varsani¹  Pierre Lefeuvre²  Jean-Michel Lett²  Daniel Pande³  Francisco Lakay⁴  Dionne N Shepherd⁴  Adérito L Monjane⁴  Edward P Rybicki⁵  Darren P Martin⁶  Eric van der Walt⁷ 

[1] Biomolecular Interaction Centre, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, 8140, Christchurch, New Zealand;School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, 8140, Christchurch, New Zealand;Electron Microscope Unit, University of Cape Town, 7701, RondeboschCape Town, South Africa;CIRAD, UMR 53 PVBMT CIRAD-Université de la Réunion, Pôle de Protection des Plantes, Saint Pierre, 97410, La Réunion, France;Department of Botany and Horticulture, Maseno University, P.O. Box 333, Maseno, Kenya;Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, 7701, Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa;Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, 7701, Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa;Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Observatory, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa;Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine, University of Cape Town, Observatory, 7925, Cape Town, South Africa;Centre for High-Performance Computing, Rosebank, Cape Town, South Africa;Kapa Biosystems, P.O. Box 12961, 7705, Mowbray, South Africa;

关键词: Mutation Rate;    Evolution Experiment;    Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus;    Mutation Bias;    Maize Streak Virus;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2148-12-252

 received in 2012-06-03, accepted in 2012-12-12,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundSingle-stranded (ss) DNA viruses in the family Geminiviridae are proving to be very useful in real-time evolution studies. The high mutation rate of geminiviruses and other ssDNA viruses is somewhat mysterious in that their DNA genomes are replicated in host nuclei by high fidelity host polymerases. Although strand specific mutation biases observed in virus species from the geminivirus genus Mastrevirus indicate that the high mutation rates in viruses in this genus may be due to mutational processes that operate specifically on ssDNA, it is currently unknown whether viruses from other genera display similar strand specific mutation biases. Also, geminivirus genomes frequently recombine with one another and an alternative cause of their high mutation rates could be that the recombination process is either directly mutagenic or produces a selective environment in which the survival of mutants is favoured. To investigate whether there is an association between recombination and increased basal mutation rates or increased degrees of selection favoring the survival of mutations, we compared the mutation dynamics of the MSV-MatA and MSV-VW field isolates of Maize streak virus (MSV; Mastrevirus), with both a laboratory constructed MSV recombinant, and MSV recombinants closely resembling MSV-MatA. To determine whether strand specific mutation biases are a general characteristic of geminivirus evolution we compared mutation spectra arising during these MSV experiments with those arising during similar experiments involving the geminivirus Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (Begomovirus genus).ResultsAlthough both the genomic distribution of mutations and the occurrence of various convergent mutations at specific genomic sites indicated that either mutation hotspots or selection for adaptive mutations might elevate observed mutation rates in MSV, we found no association between recombination and mutation rates. Importantly, when comparing the mutation spectra of MSV and TYLCV we observed similar strand specific mutation biases arising predominantly from imbalances in the complementary mutations G → T: C → A.ConclusionsWhile our results suggest that recombination does not strongly influence mutation rates in MSV, they indicate that high geminivirus mutation rates are at least partially attributable to increased susceptibility of all geminivirus genomes to oxidative damage while in a single stranded state.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Monjane et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.