MSphere of Influence: Experimental Evolution of RNA Viruses.

Gonzalo Moratorio

doi:10.1128/msphere.00179-20

Abstract

Gonzalo Moratorio works in the field of experimental evolution of viruses. In this mSphere of Influence article, he reflects on how the papers "Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias" by Coleman et al. (Science 320:1784-1787, 2008, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1155761) and "Codon usage determines the mutational robustness, evolutionary capacity, and virulence of an RNA virus" by Lauring et al. (Cell Host Microbe 12:623-632, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chom.2012.10.008) made an impact on his thinking about how to employ synthetic biology to study experimental evolution of viruses.

Highlights

About a decade ago, work by Coleman and colleagues entitled “Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias” [1] proposed a strategy to attenuate viruses
Work by Coleman and colleagues entitled “Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias” [1] proposed a strategy to attenuate viruses. This was achieved through the de novo synthesis of large DNA fragments, which were synonymously recoded to alter the codon pair bias of viral genes
The authors designed a variety of constructs or synthetic viruses, without changing the amino acid identity, to examine the question of “to what extent the natural encoding is optimal.”

Summary

Introduction

Work by Coleman and colleagues (from the Wimmer lab) entitled “Virus attenuation by genome-scale changes in codon pair bias” [1] proposed a strategy to attenuate viruses. This was achieved through the de novo synthesis of large DNA fragments, which were synonymously recoded to alter the codon pair bias of viral genes. The authors designed a variety of constructs or synthetic viruses, without changing the amino acid identity, to examine the question of “to what extent the natural encoding is optimal.” they tested these synthetic viruses to suggest this as a strategy to generate live attenuated vaccines.

Results

Conclusion