Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EH, UK.
CIBIO, Centro de Investigação em Biodiversidade e Recursos Genéticos, InBIO Laboratório Associado, Universidade do Porto, 4485-661 Vairão, Portugal.
Science. 2019 Mar 22;363(6433):1319-1326. doi: 10.1126/science.aau7285. Epub 2019 Feb 14.
In the 1950s the myxoma virus was released into European rabbit populations in Australia and Europe, decimating populations and resulting in the rapid evolution of resistance. We investigated the genetic basis of resistance by comparing the exomes of rabbits collected before and after the pandemic. We found a strong pattern of parallel evolution, with selection on standing genetic variation favoring the same alleles in Australia, France, and the United Kingdom. Many of these changes occurred in immunity-related genes, supporting a polygenic basis of resistance. We experimentally validated the role of several genes in viral replication and showed that selection acting on an interferon protein has increased the protein's antiviral effect.
在 20 世纪 50 年代，粘液瘤病毒被释放到澳大利亚和欧洲的欧洲兔种群中，使种群大量减少，并导致迅速产生抗药性。我们通过比较大流行前后收集的兔子的外显子组来研究抗药性的遗传基础。我们发现了一个强烈的平行进化模式，对存在遗传变异的选择有利于澳大利亚、法国和英国的相同等位基因。这些变化中有许多发生在与免疫相关的基因中，支持了多基因抗药性的基础。我们通过实验验证了几个基因在病毒复制中的作用，并表明对干扰素蛋白的选择增加了该蛋白的抗病毒作用。
