Recombination in Enteroviruses Is a Biphasic Replicative Process Involving the Generation of Greater-than Genome Length ‘Imprecise’ Intermediates

• DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1004191
• Publication Date: 2014-06-12T22:57:39Z
• Authors: Kym Lowry; Andrew Woodman; Jonathan Cook; David J. Evans
• Keywords: Viral evolution; FLP-FRT recombination; Mitotic crossover

Recombination in enteroviruses provides an evolutionary mechanism for acquiring extensive regions of novel sequence, is suggested to have a role genotype diversity and known been key the emergence neuropathogenic variants poliovirus. Despite importance this mechanism, recombination process remains relatively poorly understood. We investigated heterologous using reverse genetic approach that resulted isolation intermediate chimeric intertypic polioviruses bearing genomes with duplicated sequences at junction. Serial passage viruses exhibiting such imprecise junctions yielded progeny increased fitness which had lost sequences. Mutations or inhibitors changed polymerase fidelity coalescence replication complexes markedly altered yield recombinants (but did not influence non-replicative recombination) indicating both replicative it may be possible enhance reduce recombination-mediated viral evolution if required. propose extant result from biphasic initial event followed by resolution, deleting extraneous optimizing fitness. This has implications our wider understanding 'evolution duplication' positive-strand RNA viruses.