title: VIRAPOPS2 supports the influenza virus reassortments.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  For over 400 years, due to the reassortment of their segmented genomes, influenza viruses evolve extremely quickly and cause devastating epidemics. This reassortment arises because two flu viruses can infect the same cell and therefore the new virions' genomes will be composed of segment reassortments of the two parental strains. A treatment developed against parents could then be ineffective if the virions' genomes are different enough from their parent's genomes. It is therefore essential to simulate such reassortment phenomena to assess the risk of apparition of new flu strain.
  
  
  RESULTS
  So we decided to upgrade the forward simulator VIRAPOPS, containing already the necessary options to handle non-segmented viral populations. This new version can mimic single or successive reassortments, in birds, humans and/or swines. Other options such as the ability to treat populations of positive or negative sense viral RNAs, were also added. Finally, we propose output options giving statistics of the results.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this paper we present a new version of VIRAPOPS which now manages the viral segment reassortments and the negative sense single strain RNA viruses, these two issues being the cause of serious public health problems.
authors.affiliation: Univ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, F-75013 Paris, France ; MTI, INSERM UMR-S 973, F-75013 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Michel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Petitjean
authors.affiliation: Univ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, F-75013 Paris, France ; CNRS, UMR7592, Institut Jacques Monod, F-75013 Paris, France ; Atelier de Bio Informatique, F-75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Vanet
keywords: Population genetics; Segmented genomes; Simulator; Virology