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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Virology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2024.1411537

Intrasegmental recombination as an evolutionary force of Lassa fever virus

Provisionally accepted
Cheng-Qiang He Cheng-Qiang He *Chao Kong Chao Kong Mei He Mei He Guan-Xiang Chen Guan-Xiang Chen Shu-Min Liu Shu-Min Liu Nai-Zheng Ding Nai-Zheng Ding *
  • Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Lassa fever (LF), caused by Lassa virus (LASV), is one of the most dangerous diseases to public health. Homologous recombination (HR) is a basic genetic power driving biological evolution.However, as a negative-stranded RNA virus, it is unknown whether HR occurs between LASVs and its influence on the outbreak of LF. In this study, after analyzing 575 S and 433 L segments of LASV collected in Africa, we found that LASV can achieve HR in both of its segments. Interestingly, although the length of S segment is less than half of L segment, the proportion of LASVs with S recombinants is significantly higher than that with L recombinants. These results suggest that HR may be a feature of LASV, which can be set by natural selection to produce beneficial or eliminate harmful mutations for the virus, so it plays a role in LASV evolution during the outbreak of LF.

    Keywords: Lassa Fever, LASV, Homologous recombinant, virus evolution, Negative-strand RNA virus

    Received: 03 Apr 2024; Accepted: 29 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 He, Kong, He, Chen, Liu and Ding. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Cheng-Qiang He, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China
    Nai-Zheng Ding, Shandong Normal University, Jinan, China

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