title: The role of environmental factors on the evolution of phenotypic diversity in vesicular stomatitis virus populations.
abstract: Virus adaptation to an ever-changing environment requires the availability of variants with phenotypes that can fulfil new requirements for replication. High mutation rates result in the generation of these variants. The factors that contribute to the maintenance or elimination of this diversity, however, are not fully understood. This study used a collection of vesicular stomatitis virus strains generated under different conditions to measure the extent of variation within each population, and tested the effects of several environmental factors on diversity. It was found that the host-cell type used for selection sometimes had an effect on the extent of variation and that there may be different levels of variation over time. Persistent infections promoted higher levels of diversity than acute infections, presumably due to complementation. In contrast, environmental heterogeneity, host breadth and the cell type used for testing (as opposed to the cell type used for selection) did not seem to have an effect on the amount of phenotypic diversity observed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, University of Toledo Health Science Campus, Toledo, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Smith-Tsurkan
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, University of Toledo Health Science Campus, Toledo, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Roger A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Herr
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Toledo Health Science Campus, Toledo, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Sadik
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Khuder
authors.affiliation: Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Section of Integrative Biology, and Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
authors.forename: Claus O
authors.initials: CO
authors.lastname: Wilke
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, University of Toledo Health Science Campus, Toledo, OH, USA.
authors.forename: Isabel S
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Novella
mesh_terms: D000220:Adaptation, Biological; D000818:Animals; D002460:Cell Line; D014644:Genetic Variation; D005828:Genetics, Population; D006801:Humans; D018116:Vesiculovirus / Q000235:genetics / Q000502:physiology*; D014779:Virus Replication