FluPhenotype—a one-stop platform for early warnings of the influenza A virus

Abstract Motivation Newly emerging influenza viruses keep challenging global public health. To evaluate the potential risk of the viruses, it is critical to rapidly determine the phenotypes of the viruses, including the antigenicity, host, virulence and drug resistance. Results Here, we built FluPhenotype, a one-stop platform to rapidly determinate the phenotypes of the influenza A viruses. The input of FluPhenotype is the complete or partial genomic/protein sequences of the influenza A viruses. The output presents five types of information about the viruses: (i) sequence annotation including the gene and protein names as well as the open reading frames, (ii) potential hosts and human-adaptation-associated amino acid markers, (iii) antigenic and genetic relationships with the vaccine strains of different HA subtypes, (iv) mammalian virulence-related amino acid markers and (v) drug resistance-related amino acid markers. FluPhenotype will be a useful bioinformatic tool for surveillance and early warnings of the newly emerging influenza A viruses. Availability and implementation It is publicly available from: http://www.computationalbiology.cn : 18888/IVEW. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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Plasticity of the Influenza Virus H5 HA Protein

mBio ◽

10.1128/mbio.03324-20 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Huihui Kong ◽

David F. Burke ◽

Tiago Jose da Silva Lopes ◽

Kosuke Takada ◽

Masaki Imai ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Influenza Virus ◽

Amino Acid ◽

Mammalian Cells ◽

Influenza A ◽

Viral Antigen ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Highly Pathogenic ◽

Antigenic Properties ◽

Ha Protein

ABSTRACT Since the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses of the H5 subtype, the major viral antigen, hemagglutinin (HA), has undergone constant evolution, resulting in numerous genetic and antigenic (sub)clades. To explore the consequences of amino acid changes at sites that may affect the antigenicity of H5 viruses, we simultaneously mutated 17 amino acid positions of an H5 HA by using a synthetic gene library that, theoretically, encodes all combinations of the 20 amino acids at the 17 positions. All 251 mutant viruses sequenced possessed ≥13 amino acid substitutions in HA, demonstrating that the targeted sites can accommodate a substantial number of mutations. Selection with ferret sera raised against H5 viruses of different clades resulted in the isolation of 39 genotypes. Further analysis of seven variants demonstrated that they were antigenically different from the parental virus and replicated efficiently in mammalian cells. Our data demonstrate the substantial plasticity of the influenza virus H5 HA protein, which may lead to novel antigenic variants. IMPORTANCE The HA protein of influenza A viruses is the major viral antigen. In this study, we simultaneously introduced mutations at 17 amino acid positions of an H5 HA expected to affect antigenicity. Viruses with ≥13 amino acid changes in HA were viable, and some had altered antigenic properties. H5 HA can therefore accommodate many mutations in regions that affect antigenicity. The substantial plasticity of H5 HA may facilitate the emergence of novel antigenic variants.

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Antiviral drug resistance in seasonal and pandemic influenza

Microbiology Australia ◽

10.1071/ma11026 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 32 (1) ◽

pp. 26

Author(s):

Aeron C Hurt

Keyword(s):

Drug Resistance ◽

Human Population ◽

Influenza A ◽

Antiviral Drug ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Antiviral Resistance ◽

Influenza B ◽

Neuraminidase Inhibitors ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Antiviral Drug Resistance

Two classes of anti-influenza drugs are currently available for the treatment or prophylaxis of influenza. These are the adamantanes (amantadine and rimantadine), which block the activity of the M2 ion channel of influenza A viruses (but not influenza B viruses), and the neuraminidase inhibitors (NAIs), which act by binding to the enzymatic site of the influenza neuraminidase (NA) thereby preventing progeny virions from being released from the host cell during viral replication. Antiviral resistance can occur in influenza viruses and render the drug ineffective for the treatment of patients. Virtually all influenza A viruses currently circulating in the human population are resistant to the adamantanes, while in comparison these viruses remain susceptible to the NAIs. In particular, very low NAI resistance has been observed in pandemic A(H1N1) 2009 viruses, even though unprecedented amounts of these drugs were used.

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Tempel: time-series mutation prediction of influenza A viruses via attention-based recurrent neural networks

Bioinformatics ◽

10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa050 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 36 (9) ◽

pp. 2697-2704 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Rui Yin ◽

Emil Luusua ◽

Jan Dabrowski ◽

Yu Zhang ◽

Chee Keong Kwoh

Keyword(s):

Neural Networks ◽

Time Series ◽

Recurrent Neural Networks ◽

Influenza A ◽

Sequence Data ◽

Predictive Performance ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Supplementary Information ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Mutation Prediction

Abstract Motivation Influenza viruses are persistently threatening public health, causing annual epidemics and sporadic pandemics. The evolution of influenza viruses remains to be the main obstacle in the effectiveness of antiviral treatments due to rapid mutations. The goal of this work is to predict whether mutations are likely to occur in the next flu season using historical glycoprotein hemagglutinin sequence data. One of the major challenges is to model the temporality and dimensionality of sequential influenza strains and to interpret the prediction results. Results In this article, we propose an efficient and robust time-series mutation prediction model (Tempel) for the mutation prediction of influenza A viruses. We first construct the sequential training samples with splittings and embeddings. By employing recurrent neural networks with attention mechanisms, Tempel is capable of considering the historical residue information. Attention mechanisms are being increasingly used to improve the performance of mutation prediction by selectively focusing on the parts of the residues. A framework is established based on Tempel that enables us to predict the mutations at any specific residue site. Experimental results on three influenza datasets show that Tempel can significantly enhance the predictive performance compared with widely used approaches and provide novel insights into the dynamics of viral mutation and evolution. Availability and implementation The datasets, source code and supplementary documents are available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/15WULR5__6k47iRotRPl3H7ghi3RpeNXH. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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Airborne Transmission of Avian Origin H9N2 Influenza A Viruses in Mammals

Viruses ◽

10.3390/v13101919 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (10) ◽

pp. 1919

Author(s):

C. Joaquín Cáceres ◽

Daniela S. Rajao ◽

Daniel R. Perez

Keyword(s):

Amino Acid ◽

Influenza A ◽

Mammalian Species ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Human Influenza ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Highly Pathogenic ◽

Zoonotic Infections ◽

The World ◽

Avian Origin

Influenza A viruses (IAV) are widespread viruses affecting avian and mammalian species worldwide. IAVs from avian species can be transmitted to mammals including humans and, thus, they are of inherent pandemic concern. Most of the efforts to understand the pathogenicity and transmission of avian origin IAVs have been focused on H5 and H7 subtypes due to their highly pathogenic phenotype in poultry. However, IAV of the H9 subtype, which circulate endemically in poultry flocks in some regions of the world, have also been associated with cases of zoonotic infections. In this review, we discuss the mammalian transmission of H9N2 and the molecular factors that are thought relevant for this spillover, focusing on the HA segment. Additionally, we discuss factors that have been associated with the ability of these viruses to transmit through the respiratory route in mammalian species. The summarized information shows that minimal amino acid changes in the HA and/or the combination of H9N2 surface genes with internal genes of human influenza viruses are enough for the generation of H9N2 viruses with the ability to transmit via aerosol.

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Adaptation of Pandemic H1N1 Influenza Viruses in Mice

Journal of Virology ◽

10.1128/jvi.00159-10 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 84 (17) ◽

pp. 8607-8616 ◽

Cited By ~ 158

Author(s):

Natalia A. Ilyushina ◽

Alexey M. Khalenkov ◽

Jon P. Seiler ◽

Heather L. Forrest ◽

Nicolai V. Bovin ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Amino Acid ◽

Pandemic Influenza ◽

Influenza A ◽

H1n1 Influenza ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Mouse Lung ◽

Mammalian Host ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Receptor Specificity ◽

Viral Receptor

ABSTRACT The molecular mechanism by which pandemic 2009 influenza A viruses were able to sufficiently adapt to humans is largely unknown. Subsequent human infections with novel H1N1 influenza viruses prompted an investigation of the molecular determinants of the host range and pathogenicity of pandemic influenza viruses in mammals. To address this problem, we assessed the genetic basis for increased virulence of A/CA/04/09 (H1N1) and A/TN/1-560/09 (H1N1) isolates, which are not lethal for mice, in a new mammalian host by promoting their mouse adaptation. The resulting mouse lung-adapted variants showed significantly enhanced growth characteristics in eggs, extended extrapulmonary tissue tropism, and pathogenicity in mice. All mouse-adapted viruses except A/TN/1-560/09-MA2 grew faster and to higher titers in cells than the original strains. We found that 10 amino acid changes in the ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex (PB2 E158G/A, PA L295P, NP D101G, and NP H289Y) and hemagglutinin (HA) glycoprotein (K119N, G155E, S183P, R221K, and D222G) controlled enhanced mouse virulence of pandemic isolates. HA mutations acquired during adaptation affected viral receptor specificity by enhancing binding to α2,3 together with decreasing binding to α2,6 sialyl receptors. PB2 E158G/A and PA L295P amino acid substitutions were responsible for the significant enhancement of transcription and replication activity of the mouse-adapted H1N1 variants. Taken together, our findings suggest that changes optimizing receptor specificity and interaction of viral polymerase components with host cellular factors are the major mechanisms that contribute to the optimal competitive advantage of pandemic influenza viruses in mice. These modulators of virulence, therefore, may have been the driving components of early evolution, which paved the way for novel 2009 viruses in mammals.

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VirPreNet: a weighted ensemble convolutional neural network for the virulence prediction of influenza A virus using all eight segments

Bioinformatics ◽

10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa901 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Rui Yin ◽

Zihan Luo ◽

Pei Zhuang ◽

Zhuoyi Lin ◽

Chee Keong Kwoh

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Neural Network ◽

Convolutional Neural Network ◽

Influenza A Virus ◽

Influenza A ◽

Lethal Dose ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Supplementary Information ◽

Numerical Representation ◽

Influenza A Viruses

Abstract Motivation Influenza viruses are persistently threatening public health, causing annual epidemics and sporadic pandemics. The evolution of influenza viruses remains to be the main obstacle in the effectiveness of antiviral treatments due to rapid mutations. Previous work has been investigated to reveal the determinants of virulence of the influenza A virus. To further facilitate flu surveillance, explicit detection of influenza virulence is crucial to protect public health from potential future pandemics. Results In this article, we propose a weighted ensemble convolutional neural network (CNN) for the virulence prediction of influenza A viruses named VirPreNet that uses all eight segments. Firstly, mouse lethal dose 50 is exerted to label the virulence of infections into two classes, namely avirulent and virulent. A numerical representation of amino acids named ProtVec is applied to the eight-segments in a distributed manner to encode the biological sequences. After splittings and embeddings of influenza strains, the ensemble CNN is constructed as the base model on the influenza dataset of each segment, which serves as the VirPreNet’s main part. Followed by a linear layer, the initial predictive outcomes are integrated and assigned with different weights for the final prediction. The experimental results on the collected influenza dataset indicate that VirPreNet achieves state-of-the-art performance combining ProtVec with our proposed architecture. It outperforms baseline methods on the independent testing data. Moreover, our proposed model reveals the importance of PB2 and HA segments on the virulence prediction. We believe that our model may provide new insights into the investigation of influenza virulence. Availability and implementation Codes and data to generate the VirPreNet are publicly available at https://github.com/Rayin-saber/VirPreNet. Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

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Genetic diversity of influenza A viruses circulating in Bulgaria during the 2018–2019 winter season

Journal of Medical Microbiology ◽

10.1099/jmm.0.001198 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 69 (7) ◽

pp. 986-998

Author(s):

Neli Korsun ◽

Rodney Daniels ◽

Svetla Angelova ◽

Burcu Ermetal ◽

Iliyana Grigorova ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Genetic Diversity ◽

Amino Acid ◽

Amino Acid Sequence ◽

Influenza A ◽

Winter Season ◽

Vaccine Virus ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Amino Acid Substitutions ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Antigenic Sites

Introduction. Influenza viruses evolve rapidly and change their antigenic characteristics, necessitating biannual updates of flu vaccines. Aim. The aim of this study was to characterize influenza viruses circulating in Bulgaria during the 2018/2019 season and to identify amino acid substitutions in them that might impact vaccine effectiveness. Methodology. Typing/subtyping of influenza viruses were performed using real-time Reverse Transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) and results of phylogenetic and amino acid sequence analyses of influenza strains are presented. Results. A(H1N1)pdm09 (66 %) predominated over A(H3N2) (34 %) viruses, with undetected circulation of B viruses in the 2018/2019 season. All A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses studied fell into the recently designated 6B.1A subclade with over 50 % falling in four subgroups: 6B.1A2, 6B.1A5, 6B.1A6 and 6B.1A7. Analysed A(H3N2) viruses belonged to subclades 3C.2a1b and 3C.2a2. Amino acid sequence analysis of 36 A(H1N1)pdm09 isolates revealed the presence of six–ten substitutions in haemagglutinin (HA), compared to the A/Michigan/45/2015 vaccine virus, three of which occurred in antigenic sites Sa and Cb, together with four–nine changes at positions in neuraminidase (NA), and a number of substitutions in internal proteins. HA1 D222N substitution, associated with increased virulence, was identified in two A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses. Despite the presence of several amino acid substitutions, A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses remained antigenically similar to the vaccine virus. The 28 A(H3N2) viruses characterized carried substitutions in HA, including some in antigenic sites A, B, C and E, in NA and internal protein sequences. Conclusion. The results of this study showed the genetic diversity of circulating influenza viruses and the need for continuous antigenic and molecular surveillance.

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Widespread Historical Contingency in Influenza Viruses

10.1101/070094 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Jean Claude Nshogozabahizi ◽

Jonathan Dench ◽

Stéphane Aris-Brosou

Keyword(s):

Drug Resistance ◽

Conformational Changes ◽

Influenza A ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Historical Contingency ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Correlated Evolution ◽

A Genome ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Impact

AbstractIn systems biology and genomics, epistasis characterizes the impact that a substitution at a particular location in a genome can have on a substitution at another location. This phenomenon is often implicated in the evolution of drug resistance or to explain why particular ‘disease-causing’ mutations do not have the same outcome in all individuals. Hence, uncovering these mutations and their locations in a genome is a central question in biology. However, epistasis is notoriously difficult to uncover, especially in fast-evolving organisms. Here, we present a novel statistical approach that replies on a model developed in ecology and that we adapt to analyze genetic data in fast-evolving systems such as the influenza A virus. We validate the approach using a two-pronged strategy: extensive simulations demonstrate a low-to-moderate sensitivity with excellent specificity and precision, while analyses of experimentally-validated data recover known interactions, including in a eukaryotic system. We further evaluate the ability of our approach to detect correlated evolution during antigenic shifts or at the emergence of drug resistance. We show that in all cases, correlated evolution is prevalent in influenza A viruses, involving many pairs of sites linked together in chains, a hallmark of historical contingency. Strikingly, interacting sites are separated by large physical distances, which entails either long-range conformational changes or functional tradeoffs, for which we find support with the emergence of drug resistance. Our work paves a new way for the unbiased detection of epistasis in a wide range of organisms by performing whole-genome scans.

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Lethality to Ferrets of H5N1 Influenza Viruses Isolated from Humans and Poultry in 2004

Journal of Virology ◽

10.1128/jvi.79.4.2191-2198.2005 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 79 (4) ◽

pp. 2191-2198 ◽

Cited By ~ 237

Author(s):

Elena A. Govorkova ◽

Jerold E. Rehg ◽

Scott Krauss ◽

Hui-Ling Yen ◽

Yi Guan ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Amino Acid ◽

Influenza A ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Avian Species ◽

Single Amino Acid ◽

Amino Acid Difference ◽

Upper Respiratory Tract ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

H5n1 Influenza ◽

High Virus

ABSTRACT The 2004 outbreaks of H5N1 influenza viruses in Vietnam and Thailand were highly lethal to humans and to poultry; therefore, newly emerging avian influenza A viruses pose a continued threat, not only to avian species but also to humans. We studied the pathogenicity of four human and nine avian H5N1/04 influenza viruses in ferrets (an excellent model for influenza studies). All four human isolates were fatal to intranasally inoculated ferrets. The human isolate A/Vietnam/1203/04 (H5N1) was the most pathogenic isolate; the severity of disease was associated with a broad tissue tropism and high virus titers in multiple organs, including the brain. High fever, weight loss, anorexia, extreme lethargy, and diarrhea were observed. Two avian H5N1/04 isolates were as pathogenic as the human viruses, causing lethal systemic infections in ferrets. Seven of nine H5N1/04 viruses isolated from avian species caused mild infections, with virus replication restricted to the upper respiratory tract. All chicken isolates were nonlethal to ferrets. A sequence analysis revealed polybasic amino acids in the hemagglutinin connecting peptides of all H5N1/04 viruses, indicating that multiple molecular differences in other genes are important for a high level of virulence. Interestingly, the human A/Vietnam/1203/04 isolate had a lysine substitution at position 627 of PB2 and had one to eight amino acid changes in all gene products except that of the M1 gene, unlike the A/chicken/Vietnam/C58/04 and A/quail/Vietnam/36/04 viruses. Our results indicate that viruses that are lethal to mammals are circulating among birds in Asia and suggest that pathogenicity in ferrets, and perhaps humans, reflects a complex combination of different residues rather than a single amino acid difference.

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An evaluation of the InDevR FluChip-8G insight microarray assay in characterizing influenza a viruses

Tropical Diseases Travel Medicine and Vaccines ◽

10.1186/s40794-021-00133-7 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 7 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Emily S. Bailey ◽

Xinye Wang ◽

Mai-juan Ma ◽

Guo-lin Wang ◽

Gregory C. Gray

Keyword(s):

Influenza A ◽

Influenza Viruses ◽

Time Range ◽

Influenza B ◽

Influenza A Viruses ◽

Laboratory Methods ◽

Duke University ◽

Multiple Viral Strains ◽

Rapid Characterization

AbstractInfluenza viruses are an important cause of disease in both humans and animals, and their detection and characterization can take weeks. In this study, we sought to compare classical virology techniques with a new rapid microarray method for the detection and characterization of a very diverse, panel of animal, environmental, and human clinical or field specimens that were molecularly positive for influenza A alone (n = 111), influenza B alone (n = 3), both viruses (n = 13), or influenza negative (n = 2) viruses. All influenza virus positive samples in this study were first subtyped by traditional laboratory methods, and later evaluated using the FluChip-8G Insight Assay (InDevR Inc. Boulder, CO) in laboratories at Duke University (USA) or at Duke Kunshan University (China). The FluChip-8G Insight multiplexed assay agreed with classical virologic techniques 59 (54.1%) of 109 influenza A-positive, 3 (100%) of the 3 influenza B-positive, 0 (0%) of 10 both influenza A- and B-positive samples, 75% of 24 environmental samples including those positive for H1, H3, H7, H9, N1, and N9 strains, and 80% of 22 avian influenza samples. It had difficulty with avian N6 types and swine H3 and N2 influenza specimens. The FluChip-8G Insight assay performed well with most human, environmental, and animal samples, but had some difficulty with samples containing multiple viral strains and with specific animal influenza strains. As classical virology methods are often iterative and can take weeks, the FluChip-8G Insight Assay rapid results (time range 8 to 12 h) offers considerable time savings. As the FluChip-8G analysis algorithm is expected to improve over time with addition of new subtypes and sample matrices, the FluChip-8G Insight Assay has considerable promise for rapid characterization of novel influenza viruses affecting humans or animals.

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