Direct whole-genome deep-sequencing of human respiratory syncytial virus A and B from Vietnamese children identifies distinct patterns of inter- and intra-host evolution.

Human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the major cause of lower respiratory tract infections in children ,2 years of age. Little is known about RSV intra-host genetic diversity over the course of infection or about the immune pressures that drive RSV molecular evolution. We performed whole-genome deep-sequencing on 53 RSV-positive samples (37 RSV subgroup A and 16 RSV subgroup B) collected from the upper airways of hospitalized children in southern Vietnam over two consecutive seasons.

The epitopes of apolipoprotein A-I define distinct structural domains including a mobile middle region.

The definition of epitopes on apoA-I provides evidence for a very dense packing of the peptide chain and supports the proposed supersecondary structure, made of repetitive antiparallel helices. Screening with overlapping synthetic hexapeptides shows that only a few epitopes are continuous and that all continuous contact sequences identified within the epitopes coincide or are contiguous to a putative beta-turn, such as residues 1-8, 48-55, 98-104, 118-123, and 135-140. On the N-terminal half of apoA-I we identified 6 overlapping tertiary discontinuous epitopes, uniquely constituted by amino acids and discontinuous sequences on helical segments that are far apart and which define a particular region with a complex tertiary structure.