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Title

Palindromes drive the re-assortment in Influenza A

 

Authors

Abdullah Zubaer1, 2* & Simrika Thapa1, 2

 

Affiliation

1Swapnojaatra Bioresearch Laboratory, DataSoft Systems, Dhaka-1215, Bangladesh; 2Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh

 

Email

abdullah.zubaer@datasoft-bd.com; *Corresponding author

 

Phone

+880-2-9110169, Ext: 104

 

Fax

+880-29114747

 

Article Type

Hypothesis

 

Date

Received September 08, 2011; Accepted September 11, 2011; Published September 28, 2011

 

Abstract

Different subtypes of Influenza A virus are associated with species specific, zoonotic or pandemic Influenza. The cause of its severity underlies in complicated evolution of its segmented RNA genome. Although genetic shift and genetic drift are well known in the evolution of this virus, we reported the significant role of unique RNA palindromes in its evolution. Our computational approach identified the existence of unique palindromes in each subtype of Influenza A virus with its absence in Influenza B relating the fact of virulence and vigorous genetic hitchhiking in Influenza A. The current study focused on the re-assortment event responsible for the emergence of pandemic-2009 H1N1 virus, which is associated with outgrow of new palindrome and in turn, changing its RNA structure. We hypothesize that the change in RNA structure due to the presence of palindrome facilitates the event of re-assortment in Influenza A. Thus the evolutionary process of Influenza A is much more complicated as previously known, and that has been demonstrated in this study.

 

Citation

Zubaer & Thapa. Bioinformation 7(3): 115-119 (2011)
 

Edited by

P Kangueane

 

ISSN

0973-2063

 

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

 

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.