Patterns of selection in hepatitis C and HIV

TL;DRAbstract

Viruses, such as Hepatitis and HIV, are able to evade the host immune responses they provoke and often lead to chronic infections and even death. Global estimates reveal that 130 million people are infected with Hepatitis C, while the number of people living with HIV/AIDS is 33.4 million. The extensive genetic diversity, characteristic of both Hepatitis C and HIV, has undoubtedly made vaccine development difficult and has prompted several to carefully study the relationship between virus and host. Analysis of complete polyprotein-encoding sequences of the two most prevalent genotypes of Hepatitis C (HCV-1a and HCV-1b) showed evidence, not only of past purifying selection, but also of abundant slightly deleterious nonsynonymous variants subject to ongoing purifying selection. In the case of both HCV-1a and HCV-1b, the NS3 protein (with protease and NTPase/helicase activity) demonstrated a high incidence of forward-and-backward or parallel nonsynonymous changes in CTL epitopes. This patt

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