Background: Comparing the fitness of dengue virus (DENV) isolates is a pivotal approach to assess the contribution of DENV strains' replicative fitness to epidemiological contexts, including serotype replacements. Competition assays are the gold standard to compare the replicative fitness of viral strains. Implementing competition assays between DENV serotypes requires an experimental setup and an appropriate read-out to quantify the viral progeny of strains belonging to different serotypes.
Results: In the current study, we optimized an existing serotyping qRT-PCR by adapting primer/probe design and multiplexing the serotype-specific qRT-PCR reactions, allowing to accurately detect and quantify all four DENV serotypes. The qRT-PCR was specific, had a limit of detection of at least 5.08×10, 5.16×10, 7.14×10 and 1.36 ×10 genome copies/μL, an efficiency of 1.993, 1.975, 1.902, 1.898 and a linearity (R) of 0.99975, 0.99975, 0.9985, 0.99965 for DENV-1, -2, -3 and -4 respectively. Challenge of this multiplex serotype-specific qRT-PCR on mixes of viral supernatants containing known concentrations of strains from two serotypes evidenced an accurate quantification of the amount of genome copies of each serotype. We next developed an assay to compare the replicative fitness of two DENV serotypes in the human hepatic cell line HuH7: quantification of the viral progeny of each serotype in the inoculum and the supernatant using the serotype-specific multiplex qRT-PCR unveiled an enrichment of the supernatant in DENV-1 genome copies, uncovering the enhanced replicative fitness of this DENV-1 isolate.
Conclusions: This optimized qRT-PCR combined to a relevant cellular model allowed to accurately quantify the viral progeny of two DENV strains belonging to two different serotypes in a competition assay, allowing to determine which strain had a replicative advantage. This reliable experimental setup is adaptable to the comparative study of the replicative fitness of any DENV serotypes.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/2024.09.10.611934 | DOI Listing |
Genome Biol Evol
January 2025
Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, Division of Microbial Ecology, University of Vienna, Vienna 1030, Austria.
The need for high-quality protist genomes has prevented in-depth computational and experimental studies of giant virus-host interactions. In addition, our current knowledge of host range is highly biased due to the few hosts used to isolate novel giant viruses. This study presents 6 high-quality amoeba genomes from known and potential giant virus hosts belonging to 2 distinct eukaryotic clades: Amoebozoa and Discoba.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
Department of Sport Injuries and Corrective Exercises, Faculty of Physical Education and Sport Sciences, Shahid Bahonar University of Kerman, Kerman, Iran.
Individuals with intellectual disabilities (ID) often exhibit lower levels of physical fitness compared to the general population, including reduced strength, endurance, flexibility, and coordination. Dynamic neuromuscular stabilization (DNS) training can potentially improve the performance of adults with ID caused by weak motor skills due to a lack of desirable nerve growth during childhood and before puberty. Also, DNS training proposed to improve physical fitness in this population, but the effectiveness and durability of DNS training on specific fitness components have not been well-established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Math Biol
January 2025
Instituto de Ingeniería Matemática, Universidad de Valparaíso, Valparaíso, Chile.
We study the large-time behavior of an ensemble of entities obeying replicator-like stochastic dynamics with mean-field interactions as a model for a primordial ecology. We prove the propagation-of-chaos property and establish conditions for the strong persistence of the N-replicator system and the existence of invariant distributions for a class of associated McKean-Vlasov dynamics. In particular, our results show that, unlike typical models of neutral ecology, fitness equivalence does not need to be assumed but emerges as a condition for the persistence of the system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPLoS Comput Biol
January 2025
Genesupport, Avenue de Sévelin 18, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Catalysis and specifically autocatalysis are the quintessential building blocks of life. Yet, although autocatalytic networks are necessary, they are not sufficient for the emergence of life-like properties, such as replication and adaptation. The ultimate and potentially fatal threat faced by molecular replicators is parasitism; if the polymerase error rate exceeds a critical threshold, even the fittest molecular species will disappear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Commun
January 2025
Univ. Grenoble Alpes, Inria, Grenoble, France.
Ribosomes are responsible for the synthesis of proteins, the major component of cellular biomass. Classical experiments have established a linear relationship between the fraction of resources invested in ribosomal proteins and the rate of balanced growth of a microbial population. Very little is known, however, about how the investment in ribosomes varies over individual cells in a population.
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