Fixations of the HIV-1 env gene refute neutralism: New evidence for pan-selective evolution

Abstract

We examined 103 nucleotide sequences of the HIV-1 env gene, sampled from 35 countries and tested: I) the random (neutral) distribution of the number of nucleotide changes; II) the proportion of bases at molecular equilibrium; III) the neutral expected homogeneity of the distribution of new fixated bases; IV) the hypothesis of the neighbor influence on the mutation rates in a site. The expected random number of fixations per site was estimated by Bose-Einstein statistics, and the expected frequencies of bases by matrices of mutation-fixation rates. The homogeneity of new fixations was analyzed using χ² and trinomial tests for homogeneity. Fixations of the central base in trinucleotides were used to test the neighbor influence on base substitutions. Neither the number of fixations nor the frequencies of bases fitted the expected neutral distribution. There was a highly significant heterogeneity in the distribution of new fixations, and several sites showed more transversions than transitions, showing that each nucleotide site has its own pattern of change. These three independent results make the neutral theory, the nearly neutral and the neighbor influence hypotheses untenable and indicate that evolution of env is rather highly selective.