Asynchrony between virus diversity and antibody selection limits influenza virus evolution
Authors
Petrova, Velislava N
Rossine, Fernando W
Levin, Simon A
Publication Date
2020-11-11Journal Title
eLife
Publisher
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Volume
9
Language
en
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Morris, D. H., Petrova, V. N., Rossine, F. W., Parker, E., Grenfell, B. T., Neher, R. A., Levin, S. A., & et al. (2020). Asynchrony between virus diversity and antibody selection limits influenza virus evolution. eLife, 9 https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.62105
Description
Funder: H2020 European Research Council; FundRef: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100010663; Grant(s): Naviflu:818353
Abstract
Seasonal influenza viruses create a persistent global disease burden by evolving to escape immunity induced by prior infections and vaccinations. New antigenic variants have a substantial selective advantage at the population level, but these variants are rarely selected within-host, even in previously immune individuals. Using a mathematical model, we show that the temporal asynchrony between within-host virus exponential growth and antibody-mediated selection could limit within-host antigenic evolution. If selection for new antigenic variants acts principally at the point of initial virus inoculation, where small virus populations encounter well-matched mucosal antibodies in previously-infected individuals, there can exist protection against reinfection that does not regularly produce observable new antigenic variants within individual infected hosts. Our results provide a theoretical explanation for how virus antigenic evolution can be highly selective at the global level but nearly neutral within-host. They also suggest new avenues for improving influenza control.
Keywords
Research Article, Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology and Infectious Disease, Influenza virus, antibody-mediated selection, cross scale evolutionary dynamics, Virus
Identifiers
62105
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/elife.62105
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/315456
Rights
Licence:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/