Polymorphism of the dengue virus genome

What is it about?

We investigated the nucleotide polymorphisms among the four genotypes of the Dengue virus - DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4 by qualitative and quantitative characterization. We studied the Nucleotide Substitution Density (NSD) along each genome identifying the regions with higher degree of mutation and/or conservation. Then, we calculated the Average Nucleotide Substitution Density (ANSD) for each serotype.

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Why is it important?

Dengue virus may cause hemorrhage and lead to death in certain conditions with a frequency of 1 in 10,000 infected people. The NS5 domain from DENV-2 that corresponds to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase also had a higher mutation rate compared to that of the other DENVs. This suggests that the polymorphism and the virulence can be correlated in DENV-2, which may contribute to the understanding of the disease evolution.

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