Author(s)

Shaomin Yan, Guang Wu

State Key Laboratory of Non-Food Biomass Enzyme Technology, National Engineering Research Center for Non-Food Biorefinery, Guangxi Key Laboratory of Biorefinery, Guangxi Academy of Sciences, Nanning, China.

Global climate changes affect the functioning of ecosystems, in particular host-pathogen interactions, with major consequences in health ecology, however, it is less addressed how the change in global temperature affects the protein family of influenza virus. In this study, we studied the adaptation of polymerase basic protein 1 (PB1) family from influenza A virus to temperature change. 3841 PB1 proteins sampled from 1956-2011 were quantified by the amino-acid pair predictability and then compared their general changes with the temperature changes (Had-CRUT3v and CRUTEM4v data sets) of corresponding years on a 5? by 5? grid-box basis. Also, point-to-point comparisons were conducted from 1956 to 1998 in all and different species. The results showed that both changes in the temperature and unpredictable portion of PB1 proteins had similar trends from 1956 to 2011, which provides the evidence of virus adaptation at protein level to climate change.

Adaptation; Evolution; Influenza A Virus; Polymerase Basic Protein 1; Temperature Change

Yan, S. and Wu, G. (2012) Adaptation in polymerase basic protein 1 family from influenza A virus to climate change. Health, 4, 968-973. doi: 10.4236/health.2012.430148.