[Different patterns of molecular evolution of influenza A viruses in avian and human population]. / Razlichie rezhimov molekuliarnoi évoliutsii virusov grippa A v populiatsiiakh ptits i cheloveka.

Patterns of molecular evolution of the influenza virus proteins and genes are discussed. The subsets of all viral genes corresponding to statistically significant clusters on dendrogram were shown to fall into two distinct groups. The first group was characterized by the presence of an exact linear relationship between the year of the strain isolation and the evolutionary distance. The subsets of human influenza virus genes belong to this group. A method for eliminating the "frozen" strains from the subsets and for calculating the evolutionary rates without construction of phylogenetic trees has been elaborated. The substitution rates calculated according to this technique agreed with the data obtained previously. A linear relationship was not observed in the second group. This group was predominantly composed of avian influenza virus genes. The lack of linear correlation pointed to the cocirculation of a large amount of different influenza virus genomic segments in the avian population. An approach for an examination of the role of intragenic recombination in the development of the antigenic subtypes of hemagglutinin is suggested. Our results suggest that recombination did not play a considerable role in this process, and that all modern subtypes of this protein were probably formed before the introduction of the influenza viruses into the human population. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that influenza viruses penetrated into human population from their pools in avian populations.

[Comparison of the synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates in various regions of the neuraminidase and hemagglutinin genes of the influenza A virus]. / Sravnenie skorosti nakopleniia sinonimicheskikh i nesinonimicheskikh zamen dlia razlichnykh raionov genov neiraminidazy i gemaggliutinina virusa grippa A.

A new, statistically justified approach was used to estimate the synonymous and non-synonymous substitution rates in several antigenic variants of influenza-virus surface proteins. The rates were compared for antigenic and nonantigenic regions of neuraminidase and hemagglutinin, as well as for neuraminidase surface and internal amino acids identified by X-ray analysis. For neuraminidase, the estimation was performed for the first time. The non-synonymous substitution rate was shown to be significantly higher in antigenic than in nonantigenic sites. However, neither subsample of antigenic sites displayed a fixation rate of non-synonymous substitutions higher than that of synonymous substitutions, which would confirm the effect of positive selection on these sites and argue against a neutral evolution character. Specific features of methods used to estimate the substitution fixation rates and problems in their interpretation are discussed.