Premium
EXPERIMENTAL EVOLUTION OF AN EMERGING PLANT VIRUS IN HOST GENOTYPES THAT DIFFER IN THEIR SUSCEPTIBILITY TO INFECTION
Author(s) -
Hillung Julia,
Cuevas José M.,
Valverde Sergi,
Elena Santiago F.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/evo.12458
Subject(s) - biology , ecotype , host (biology) , arabidopsis thaliana , virus , genetics , potyvirus , adaptation (eye) , experimental evolution , gene , potato virus y , viral evolution , virulence , virology , plant virus , genome , mutant , neuroscience
This study evaluates the extent to which genetic differences among host individuals from the same species condition the evolution of a plant RNA virus. We performed a threefold replicated evolution experiment in which Tobacco etch potyvirus isolate At 17b (TEV‐ At 17b), adapted to Arabidopsis thaliana ecotype L er ‐0, was serially passaged in five genetically heterogeneous ecotypes of A. thaliana . After 15 passages we found that evolved viruses improved their fitness, showed higher infectivity and stronger virulence in their local host ecotypes. The genome of evolved lineages was sequenced and putative adaptive mutations identified. Host‐driven convergent mutations have been identified. Evidences supported selection for increased translational efficiency. Next, we sought for the specificity of virus adaptation by infecting all five ecotypes with all 15 evolved virus populations. We found that some ecotypes were more permissive to infection than others, and that some evolved virus isolates were more specialist/generalist than others. The bipartite network linking ecotypes with evolved viruses was significantly nested but not modular, suggesting that hard‐to‐infect ecotypes were infected by generalist viruses whereas easy‐to‐infect ecotypes were infected by all viruses, as predicted by a gene‐for‐gene model of infection.