Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Gao, Guangping
• Alvira, Mauricio R.
• Somanathan, Suryanarayan
• Lu, You
• Vandenberghe, Luk H.
• Rux, John J.
• Calcedo, Roberto
• Sanmiguel, Julio
• Abbas, Zahra
• Wilson, James M.

Titel

Adeno-Associated Viruses Undergo Substantial Evolution in Primates during Natural Infections

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2003-05, Vol.100 (10), p.6081-6086

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2003

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) are single-stranded DNA viruses that are endemic in human populations without known clinical sequelae and are being evaluated as vectors for human gene therapy. To better understand the biology of this virus, we examined a number of nonhuman primate species for the presence of previously uncharacterized AAVs and characterized their structure and distribution. AAV genomes were widely disseminated throughout multiple tissues of a variety of nonhuman primate species. Surprising diversity of sequence, primarily localized to hypervariable regions of the capsid protein, was detected. This diversity of sequence is caused, in part, by homologous recombination of co-infecting parental viruses that modify the serologic reactivity and tropism of the virus. This is an example of rapid molecular evolution of a DNA virus in a way that was formerly thought to be restricted to RNA viruses.