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Commentary
D225G
and Swine Acquisitions in India pH1N1 Case
Recombinomics
Commentary 13:50
May 12, 2010
One of the recent sequences, A/Pune/NIV10348/2009, has D225G appended onto the above background, providing another example of D225G jumping to different genetic backgrounds, which is most easily explained by recombination. In addition to the above non-synonymous acquisitions, the HA sequence has three synonymous changes, T141A, A1260G, and C1359T. All three of these polymorphisms are present in the recently released swine sequence from Hong Kong, A/swine/Hong Kong/2314/2009(H1N2), see list here. As seen in the serotype, this swine isolate is not closely related to the pandemic H1N1, which is dominant in humans and has jumped back to swine in many countries, including Hong Kong. In addition, two of the tree synonymous polymorphisms are found in other swine isolates, which are also H1N1 and include earlier collections, like A/Hong Kong/1110/2006(H1N2).
The presence of these three H1N2 swine polymorphisms in human pH1N1 isolated in 2009 signals more recombination involving swine sequences as a genetic reservoir. Although the above series involves synonymous polymorphisms, swine H1 sequences frequently have biologically relevant polymorphisms such as G158E and D225G, providing an expanded genetic pool for acquisition of such sequences via recombination. Both of these polymorphisms jump from one human pH1N1 genetic background to another, signaling recombination between human sequences. Integrating swine sequences with human pH1N1 sequences produces patterns similar to pandemic H1N1 from 1918, which had alternating of regions matching human and swine sequences, which were present in all eight gene segments.
The finding of alternating human and swine polymorphisms in pH1N1 raises pandemic concerns.
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