Speaker
Description
Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) is among the most common causes of respiratory tract infections among humans, especially affecting children and immunocompromised patients. HMPV is closely related to human respiratory syncytial virus (hRSV), these viruses being the only two members of the pneumovirus family known to infect humans. All pneumoviruses express fusion (F) proteins on their surface which are obligatory for viral entry into the host cell and induce protective neutralizing antibodies. Due to its structural and functional constraints, the F gene is the most conserved surface antigen among the different species and is often used to sequence hMPV and hRSV.
As part of this work, we set up automated phylogenetic trees for hMPV on Nextstrain using hMPV data available on GenBank. The phylogenetic trees include builds for the whole genome, as well as genes F and G. The phylogenies, which are updated on a daily basis, are a publicly available resource for tracking the real-time evolution of hMPV. We also developed an open-source tool on Nextclade for classifying hMPV genotypes, genome alignment, mutation calling, quality checks and phylogenetic placement.
Another part of this work was comparing the intraspecies and interspecies diversity of the F gene among pneumoviruses. First, we calculated the diversity of amino acid sequences at different positions in the F gene across the phylogenetic trees of hMPV and hRSV. Then, we compared the amino acid diversity in hRSV and hMPV with the diversity observed between pneumoviruses. This comparison helped identify conserved positions across all species, indicating high functional importance for all pneumoviruses, and positions conserved within hRSV and hMPV, but not across other pneumoviruses. These mutations suggested functional importance specific to hMPV and hRSV. Studying the position of these mutations in relation to their quaternary protein structure provided a better understanding of their specific function.
| Expedited Notification | No thanks, I do not require Expedited Notification |
|---|
