Bioinformatics analysis and genetic diversity of the poliovirus

Abstract

Poliomyelitis, a disease which can manifest as muscle paralysis, is caused by the poliovirus, which is a human enterovirus and member of the family Picornaviridae that usually transmits by the faecal–oral route. The viruses of the OPV (oral poliovirus attenuated-live vaccine) strains can mutate in the human intestine during replication and some of these mutations can lead to the recovery of serious neurovirulence. Informatics research of the poliovirus genome can be used to explain further the characteristics of this virus. In this study, sequences from 100 poliovirus isolates were acquired from GenBank. To determine the evolutionary relationship between the strains, we compared and analysed the sequences of the complete poliovirus genome and the VP1 region. The reconstructed phylogenetic trees for the complete sequences and the VP1 sequences were both divided into two branches, indicating that the genetic relationships of the whole poliovirus genome and the VP1 sequences are very similar. This branching indicates that the virulence and pathogenicity of poliomyelitis may be associated with the VP1 region. Sequence alignment of the VP1 region revealed numerous mutation sites in which mutation rates of >30 % were detected. In a group of strains recorded in the USA, mutation sites and mutation types were the same and this may be associated with their distribution in the evolutionary tree and their genetic relationship. In conclusion, the genetic evolutionary relationships of poliovirus isolate sequences are determined to a great extent by the VP1 protein, and poliovirus strains located on the same branch of the phylogenetic tree contain the same mutation spots and mutation types. Hence, the genetic characteristics of the VP1 region in the poliovirus genome should be analysed to identify the transmission route of poliovirus and provide the basis of viral immunity development.