title: Ebolavirus is evolving but not changing: No evidence for functional change in EBOV from 1976 to the 2014 outbreak.
abstract: The 2014 epidemic of Ebola virus disease (EVD) has had a devastating impact in West Africa. Sequencing of ebolavirus (EBOV) from infected individuals has revealed extensive genetic variation, leading to speculation that the virus may be adapting to humans, accounting for the scale of the 2014 outbreak. We computationally analyze the variation associated with all EVD outbreaks, and find none of the amino acid replacements lead to identifiable functional changes. These changes have minimal effect on protein structure, being neither stabilizing nor destabilizing, are not found in regions of the proteins associated with known functions and tend to cluster in poorly constrained regions of proteins, specifically intrinsically disordered regions. We find no evidence that the difference between the current and previous outbreaks is due to evolutionary changes associated with transmission to humans. Instead, epidemiological factors are likely to be responsible for the unprecedented spread of EVD.
authors.affiliation: Computational and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK.
authors.forename: Abayomi S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Olabode
authors.affiliation: Computational and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK; Department of Genetics, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
authors.forename: Xiaowei
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Computational and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. Electronic address: david.robertson@manchester.ac.uk.
authors.forename: David L
authors.initials: DL
authors.lastname: Robertson
authors.affiliation: Computational and Evolutionary Biology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK. Electronic address: simon.lovell@manchester.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Simon C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Lovell
mesh_terms: D000354:Africa, Western / Q000453:epidemiology; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D029043:Ebolavirus / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification / Q000502:physiology*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000821:virology*; D006801:Humans; D020125:Mutation, Missense; D014764:Viral Proteins / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D014764:Viral Proteins
keywords: Adaptation; Ebola; Evolution; Protein function; Protein structure