He Cheng-Qiang, Kong Chao, He Mei, Chen Guan-Xiang, Liu Shu-Min, Ding Nai-Zheng
Shandong Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resistance Biology, College of Life Science, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China.
Front Microbiol. 2024 May 20;15:1411537. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1411537. eCollection 2024.
Lassa fever (LF), caused by Lassa virus (LASV), is one of the most dangerous diseases to public health. Homologous recombination (HR) is a basic genetic power driving biological evolution. However, as a negative-stranded RNA virus, it is unknown whether HR occurs between LASVs and its influence on the outbreak of LF. In this study, after analyzing 575 S and 433 L segments of LASV collected in Africa, we found that LASV can achieve HR in both of its segments. Interestingly, although the length of S segment is less than half of the L segment, the proportion of LASVs with S recombinants is significantly higher than that with L recombinants. These results suggest that HR may be a feature of LASV, which can be set by natural selection to produce beneficial or eliminate harmful mutations for the virus, so it plays a role in LASV evolution during the outbreak of LF.
拉沙热（LF）由拉沙病毒（LASV）引起，是对公共卫生最危险的疾病之一。同源重组（HR）是驱动生物进化的一种基本遗传力量。然而，作为一种负链RNA病毒，尚不清楚LASV之间是否会发生HR及其对拉沙热爆发的影响。在本研究中，分析了在非洲收集的575个LASV的S片段和433个L片段后，我们发现LASV在其两个片段中均可实现HR。有趣的是，尽管S片段的长度不到L片段的一半，但具有S重组体的LASV比例明显高于具有L重组体的比例。这些结果表明，HR可能是LASV的一个特征，可通过自然选择来产生对病毒有益的突变或消除有害突变，因此在拉沙热爆发期间的LASV进化中发挥作用。
