{"99011":{"#nid":"99011","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Researchers Show How New Viruses Evolve","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EIn the current issue of the journal Science, researchers at Michigan State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin demonstrate how a new virus evolves, which sheds light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThe scientists showed for the first time how the virus called \u0022Lambda\u0022 evolved to find a new way to attack host cells, an innovation that took\u003Cbr \/\u003E\nfour mutations to accomplish. \u0022This virus infects bacteria, in particular the common E. coli bacterium. Lambda isn\u0027t dangerous to humans, but this research demonstrated how viruses evolve complex and potentially deadly new traits,\u0022 said Justin Meyer, MSU graduate student, who led the study.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThis paper comes on the heels of news that scientists in the U.S. and the Netherlands produced a deadly version of bird flu. Even though bird flu is a mere five mutations away from becoming transmissible between humans, it\u00e2\u0080\u0099s highly unlikely the virus could naturally obtain all of the beneficial mutations all at once. However, it might evolve sequentially, gaining benefits one-by-one, if conditions are favorable at each step, he added.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EThrough research conducted at BEACON, MSU\u0027s National Science Foundation Center for the Study of Evolution in Action, Meyer and his colleagues\u00e2\u0080\u0099 ability to duplicate the results implied that adaptation by natural selection, or survival of the fittest, had an important role in the virus\u00e2\u0080\u0099 evolution.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EWhen the genomes of the adaptable virus were sequenced, they always had four mutations in common.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022The parallelism shown in the evolutionary history of adaptable viruses was striking and was far beyond what is expected by chance,\u0022 noted paper co-author \u003Ca href=\u0022\/\/www.people.gatech.edu\/people\/joshua-weitz\u0022\u003EJoshua Weitz\u003C\/a\u003E, an assistant professor in the \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\u0022\u003ESchool of Biology\u003C\/a\u003E at Georgia Tech.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EIn contrast, the viruses that didn\u0027t evolve the new way of entering cells had some of the four mutations but never all four together, said Meyer, who holds the Barnett Rosenberg Fellowship in MSU\u0027s College of Natural Science.\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u0022In other words, natural selection promoted the virus\u00e2\u0080\u0099 evolution because the mutations helped them use both their old and new attacks,\u0022 Meyer said. \u0022The finding raises questions of whether the five bird flu mutations may also have multiple functions, and could they evolve naturally?\u0022\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EAdditional authors of the paper include Devin Dobias, former MSU undergraduate (now a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis); Ryan Quick, MSU undergraduate; Richard Lenski MSU Hannah Distinguished Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics; and Jeff Barrick, a former Lenski lab researcher now on the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003EFunding for the research was provided in part by the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, James S. McDonnell Foundation and Burroughs Wellcome Fund.\n\u003C\/p\u003E\n\u003Cp\u003E\u003Cem\u003EThis research was supported in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (Award No. HR0011-09-1-0055) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigator and does not necessarily represent the official views of DARPA or NSF.\u003C\/em\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"In the current issue of the journal Science, researchers at Michigan State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Texas at Austin demonstrate how a new virus evolves, which sheds light on how easy it can be for diseases to gain dangerous mutations.","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Researchers Show How New Viruses Evolve"}],"uid":"27245","created_gmt":"2012-01-26 01:00:00","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:11:02","author":"Troy Hilley","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2012-01-26T00:00:00-05:00","iso_date":"2012-01-26T00:00:00-05:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"99021":{"id":"99021","type":"image","title":"Joshua Weitz","body":null,"created":"1449178142","gmt_created":"2015-12-03 21:29:02","changed":"1475894712","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:45:12"}},"media_ids":["99021"],"related_links":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\/","title":"School of Biology"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.biology.gatech.edu\/people\/joshua-weitz","title":"Joshua Weitz"},{"url":"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/335\/6067\/428","title":"Science Magazine"}],"groups":[{"id":"1275","name":"School of Biological Sciences"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cstrong\u003EJohn  Toon\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003EGeorgia Tech Research News and Publications\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:john.toon@innovate.gatech.edu\u0022\u003EContact John  Toon\u003C\/a\u003E\u003Cbr \/\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003E404-894-6986\u003C\/strong\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["john.toon@innovate.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}