Identification of Low- and High-Impact Hemagglutinin Amino Acid Substitutions That Drive Antigenic Drift of Influenza A(H1N1) Viruses



Harvey, William T, Benton, Donald J, Gregory, Victoria, Hall, James PJ ORCID: 0000-0002-4896-4592, Daniels, Rodney S, Bedford, Trevor, Haydon, Daniel T, Hay, Alan J, McCauley, John W and Reeve, Richard
(2016) Identification of Low- and High-Impact Hemagglutinin Amino Acid Substitutions That Drive Antigenic Drift of Influenza A(H1N1) Viruses. PLoS Pathogens, 12 (4). e1005526-.

Access the full-text of this item by clicking on the Open Access link.

Abstract

Determining phenotype from genetic data is a fundamental challenge. Identification of emerging antigenic variants among circulating influenza viruses is critical to the vaccine virus selection process, with vaccine effectiveness maximized when constituents are antigenically similar to circulating viruses. Hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assay data are commonly used to assess influenza antigenicity. Here, sequence and 3-D structural information of hemagglutinin (HA) glycoproteins were analyzed together with corresponding HI assay data for former seasonal influenza A(H1N1) virus isolates (1997–2009) and reference viruses. The models developed identify and quantify the impact of eighteen amino acid substitutions on the antigenicity of HA, two of which were responsible for major transitions in antigenic phenotype. We used reverse genetics to demonstrate the causal effect on antigenicity for a subset of these substitutions. Information on the impact of substitutions allowed us to predict antigenic phenotypes of emerging viruses directly from HA gene sequence data and accuracy was doubled by including all substitutions causing antigenic changes over a model incorporating only the substitutions with the largest impact. The ability to quantify the phenotypic impact of specific amino acid substitutions should help refine emerging techniques that predict the evolution of virus populations from one year to the next, leading to stronger theoretical foundations for selection of candidate vaccine viruses. These techniques have great potential to be extended to other antigenically variable pathogens.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: Animals, Humans, Mice, Orthomyxoviridae Infections, Hemagglutinin Glycoproteins, Influenza Virus, Influenza Vaccines, Antigens, Viral, Amino Acid Substitution, Phylogeny, Antigenic Variation, Influenza, Human, Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 15 Jan 2019 10:12
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 01:07
DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1005526
Open Access URL: https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id...
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3031157