Phylogenetic analysis of West Nile Virus in Maricopa County, Arizona: Evidence for dynamic behavior of strains in two major lineages in the American Southwest

West Nile Virus (WNV) has been detected annually in Maricopa County, Arizona, since 2003. With this in mind, we sought to determine if contemporary strains are established within the county or are annually imported. As part of this effort, we developed a new protocol for tiled amplicon sequencing of...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inbioRxiv
Main Authors Hepp, Crystal M, Jill Hager Cocking, Valentine, Michael, Young, Steven J, Damian, Dan, Sheridan, Krystal, Fofanov, Viacheslav Y, Busch, Joseph D, Erickson, Daryn E, Lancione, Ryan C, Smith, Kirk, Will, James, Townsend, John, Keim, Paul S, Engelthaler, David M
Format Paper
LanguageEnglish
Published Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 22.11.2017
Subjects
Bayesian analysis
Epidemics
Genomes
Overwintering
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Positive selection
Strains (organisms)
West Nile virus
New York
United States > US
Arizona
Online AccessGet full text

Cover

More Information
Summary:West Nile Virus (WNV) has been detected annually in Maricopa County, Arizona, since 2003. With this in mind, we sought to determine if contemporary strains are established within the county or are annually imported. As part of this effort, we developed a new protocol for tiled amplicon sequencing of WNV to efficiently attain greater than 99% coverage of 14 WNV genomes collected directly from positive mosquito pools distributed throughout Maricopa County between 2014 and 2017. Bayesian phylogenetic analyses revealed that the contemporary genomes fall within two major lineages, NA/WN02 and SW/WN03. We found that all of the Arizona strains possessed a mutation known to be under positive selection (NS5-K314R), which has arisen independently four times. The SW/WN03 strains exhibited transient behavior, with at least 10 separate introductions into Arizona when considering both historical and contemporary strains. However, NA/WN02 strains are geographically differentiated and appear to be established in Arizona, with likely origins in New York. The clade of New York and Arizona strains looks to be the most ancestral extant lineage of WNV still circulating in the United States. The establishment of WNV strains in Maricopa County provides the first evidence of local overwintering by a WNV strain over the course of several years in Arizona.
DOI:10.1101/223503