1. Experimental adaptation of dengue virus 1 to Aedes albopictus mosquitoes by in vivo selection
- Author
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Louis Lambrechts, Anavaj Sakuntabhai, Xavier de Lamballerie, Henri Jupille, Laurence Mousson, Rachel Bellone, Marie Vazeille, Gaelle Gabiane, Gorben P. Pijlman, Giel P. Göertz, Pei-Shi Yen, Sebastian Lequime, Fabien Aubry, Géraldine Piorkowski, and Anna-Bella Failloux
- Subjects
Infectivity ,0303 health sciences ,Aedes albopictus ,biology ,viruses ,030231 tropical medicine ,virus diseases ,Aedes aegypti ,Dengue virus ,biology.organism_classification ,medicine.disease_cause ,Virology ,Reverse genetics ,Virus ,3. Good health ,03 medical and health sciences ,0302 clinical medicine ,Vector (epidemiology) ,medicine ,030304 developmental biology ,Subgenomic mRNA - Abstract
In most of the world, Dengue virus (DENV) is mainly transmitted by the mosquito Aedes aegypti while in Europe, Aedes albopictus is responsible for human DENV cases since 2010. Identifying mutations that make DENV more competent for transmission by Ae. albopictus will help to predict emergence of epidemic strains. Ten serial passages in vivo in Ae. albopictus led to select DENV-1 strains with greater infectivity for this vector in vivo and in cultured mosquito cells. These changes were mediated by multiple adaptive mutations in the virus genome, including a mutation at position 10,418 in the DENV 3’UTR within an RNA stem-loop structure involved in subgenomic flavivirus RNA (sfRNA) production. Using reverse genetics, we showed that the 10,418 mutation alone does not confer a detectable increase in transmission efficiency in vivo. These results reveal the complex adaptive landscape of DENV transmission by mosquitoes and emphasize the role of epistasis in shaping evolutionary trajectories of DENV variants.
- Published
- 2020