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Viral protein instability enhances host-range evolvability.

Hannah M Strobel1, Elijah K Horwitz1, Justin R Meyer1

  • 1Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America.

Plos Genetics
|February 17, 2022
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Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Viral protein instability, not stability, enhances evolvability for host-range expansion. Unstable variants of bacteriophage lambda showed greater capacity for evolving new receptor use compared to stable variants.

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Area of Science:

  • Virology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Molecular Biology

Background:

  • Viruses possess high evolvability, influenced by mutation rates and protein properties.
  • Protein thermostability is hypothesized to enhance viral evolvability and mutational robustness.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the impact of protein thermostability on viral evolvability during host-range expansion.
  • To determine if protein stability influences a virus's ability to evolve new receptor usage.

Main Methods:

  • Directed evolution and synthetic biology were used to create bacteriophage lambda variants with altered protein stabilities.
  • These variants were tested for their capacity to evolve the use of a new receptor.

Main Results:

  • Viral variants were classified into stable, unstable, and catastrophically unstable groups.
  • Unstable variants demonstrated the highest evolvability for using a new receptor.
  • Stable variants showed significantly reduced evolvability, often requiring additional destabilizing mutations.

Conclusions:

  • Viral protein thermostability has a complex relationship with evolvability, contrary to previous assumptions.
  • Protein instability may be a key factor predicting viral host-range evolution.
  • A new molecular model for host-range expansion evolution in viruses is proposed.