sequence and population analysis
Recorded terms: dated coalescent analysis; maximum likelihood phylogenetics; phylogenetic analysis; phylogenetic inference
Escape of a microRNA-targeted Sendai virus from engineered antiviral RNA interference comes not from the virus but from host ADAR1, whose adenosine to inosine editing destroys the target sites, and human ADAR1 also suppresses endogenous silencing in a plant.
Targeted ancient DNA capture applied to skeletal remains from a Colonial hospital and chapel in Mexico City recovers three human parvovirus B19 genomes and one hepatitis B virus genome whose closest relatives are African strains, in hosts whose genetic ancestry and strontium isotope signatures point to African birth, giving direct molecular evidence that these viruses reached New Spain during the transatlantic slave trade.
A library of 107 barcoded influenza A viruses differing only in their NS1 sequence, competed in dog cells, human cells, chicken eggs and mice, resolves NS1-driven fitness as a set of divergent and partly convergent evolutionary trajectories rather than a single ordered adaptation gradient.
A synthesis arguing that antiviral defenses across the three domains of life reuse a small set of designs, antisense recognition joined to nuclease activity and later to transcriptional and secreted responses, and proposing that chordates lost RNA interference through incompatibility with interferon.