Dynamics of molecular evolution and phylogeography of Barley yellow dwarf virus-PAV

[EN] Barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) species PAV occurs frequently in irrigated wheat fields worldwide and can be efficiently transmitted by aphids. Isolates of BYDV-PAV from different countries show great divergence both in genomic sequences and pathogenicity. Despite its economical importance, the genetic structure of natural BYDV-PAV populations, as well as of the mechanisms maintaining its high diversity, remain poorly explored. In this study, we investigate the dynamics of BYDV-PAV genome evolution utilizing time-structured data sets of complete genomic sequences from 58 isolates from different hosts obtained worldwide. First, we observed that BYDV-PAV exhibits a high frequency of homologous recombination. Second, our analysis revealed that BYDV-PAV genome evolves under purifying selection and at a substitution rate similar to other RNA viruses (3.158x10(-4) nucleotide substitutions/site/year). Phylogeography analyses show that the diversification of BYDV-PAV can be explained by local geographic adaptation as well as by host-driven adaptation. These results increase our understanding of the diversity, molecular evolutionary characteristics and epidemiological properties of an economically important plant RNA virus.This work was supported by the Chinese National Key Basic Research Program (973 program No. 2006CB100203) and by the Chinese Nature Science Foundation grant number 30871622. Work in Valencia was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation grant BFU2009-06993 and by Generalitat Valenciana grant PROMETEO2010/019. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Wu, B.; Blanchard-Letort, A.; Liu, Y.; Zhou, G.; Wang, X.; Elena Fito, SF. (2011). Dynamics of molecular evolution and phylogeography of Barley yellow dwarf virus-PAV. PLoS ONE. 6:16896-16896. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0016896S1689616896