PLoS Computational Biology (Feb 2014)

A novel Bayesian method for detection of APOBEC3-mediated hypermutation and its application to zoonotic transmission of simian foamy viruses.

  • Frederick A Matsen,
  • Christopher T Small,
  • Khanh Soliven,
  • Gregory A Engel,
  • Mostafa M Feeroz,
  • Xiaoxing Wang,
  • Karen L Craig,
  • M Kamrul Hasan,
  • Michael Emerman,
  • Maxine L Linial,
  • Lisa Jones-Engel

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003493
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 2
p. e1003493

Abstract

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Simian Foamy Virus (SFV) can be transmitted from non-human primates (NHP) to humans. However, there are no documented cases of human to human transmission, and significant differences exist between infection in NHP and human hosts. The mechanism for these between-host differences is not completely understood. In this paper we develop a new Bayesian approach to the detection of APOBEC3-mediated hypermutation, and use it to compare SFV sequences from human and NHP hosts living in close proximity in Bangladesh. We find that human APOBEC3G can induce genetic changes that may prevent SFV replication in infected humans in vivo.