A critical role of intraspecific host variation in pathogen community structure

Aditi Chakraborty, Amity University Kolkata

Infections due to multiple viruses co-habiting within the same host is very prevalent within our biosphere. The intra-specific nature of resistance in the host organism affects the structure of the viral community. It is impertinent to comprehend the composition and epidemiological trajectory of the pathogenic communities to make progression in disease biology.

The co-occurrence of viruses in an organism is not random in nature and is primarily attributed to differences in genotypes of the host and the population of the local community. Replicates of Plantago lanceolata was planted in Aland Islands during the outbreak of a seasonal epidemic as sentinel traps and five focal viruses were primarily found in non-random co-occurrence pattern within the plants. PCR detection was utilized to depict the viral communities followed by joint species distribution modelling (JSDM) framework to separate any effect of environmental variations on the virus and affirm the factors of the pathogenic community structure. Most of the plants were infected by multiple viruses and 17 viral combinations were detected. While infections of betapartitivirus, capulavirus, and closterovirus were more prominent; those of caulimovirus and enamovirus were comparatively rare. The variations in capulavirus and caulimovirus accounted for the genotype of the plant while that of bepartitivirus and closterovirus was in context with the local population. Thus, the two factors: host genotype and the local population is highly responsible for determining the co-occurrence pattern of the pathogen.

The study focuses on the relevance of host genotype in creating variations of the viral assembly which might have several important implications in disease biology like the trajectory of transmission, the evolution of the virus, and the virulence pattern in hosts and thereby should be further studied to comprehend the aspects of the ecology of the pathogen.

Also read: Kyphoscoliotic Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome reported in China!

SOURCE: Intraspecific host variation plays a key role in virus community assembly, Suvi Sallinen, Anna Norberg, Anna-Liisa Laine; Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 5610 (2020) https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19273-z

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