Exponential fitness gains of RNA virus populations are limited by bottleneck effects.
Fitness is a parameter that quantitatively measures adaptation of a virus to a given environment. We have previously reported exponential fitness gains of large populations of vesicular stomatitis virus replicating in a constant environment (I. S. Novella et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 92:5841-5844, 1995). In this paper, we report that during long-term passage of such large viral populations, fitness values reached a high-fitness plateau during which stochastic fitness variations were observed. This effect appears likely to be due to bottleneck effects on very high fitness populations.
Novella
I S
IS
Department of Biology and Center for Molecular Genetics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093-0116, USA. isabel@mco.edu
Quer
J
J
Domingo
E
E
Holland
J J
JJ
D000220:Adaptation, Biological; D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D006224:Cricetinae; D051379:Mice; D014721:Vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus / Q000502:physiology*