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PMID: 10220424 Published · ppublish English Journal Article Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S. Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

Transmission bottlenecks as determinants of virulence in rapidly evolving pathogens.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America ·Vol. 96 ·No. 9 ·1999-04-27 ·Pages 5095-100

Bergstrom CT, McElhany P, Real LA

Abstract

Transmission bottlenecks occur in pathogen populations when only a few individual pathogens are transmitted from one infected host to another in the initiation of a new infection. Transmission bottlenecks can dramatically affect the evolution of virulence in rapidly evolving pathogens such as RNA viruses. Characterizing pathogen diversity with the quasispecies concept, we use analytical and simulation methods to demonstrate that severe bottlenecks are likely to drive down the virulence of a pathogen because of stochastic loss of the most virulent pathotypes, through a process analogous to Muller's ratchet. We investigate in this process the roles of host population size, duration of within-host viral replication, and transmission bottleneck size. We argue that the patterns of accumulation of deleterious mutation may explain differing levels of virulence in vertically and horizontally transmitted diseases.

MeSH Terms
Evolution, Molecular Models, Biological Mutation RNA Viruses/genetics,pathogenicity Virulence/genetics
Authors & Affiliations
3 authors, click to expand affiliations / ORCID
Bergstrom C T
Department of Biology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA. cbergst@emory.edu
McElhany P
Real L A
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Article Info
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Abbr.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
ISSN
0027-8424
DOI
10.1073/pnas.96.9.5095
Email
cbergst@emory.edu
Published
1999-04-27
Pages
5095-100
Language
English
Region
United States
NLM ID
7505876
PMCID
PMC21822
Subset
IM
Grants
NIAID NIH HHS · T32-AI0742 · United States
External Links
PubMed source DOI: 10.1073/pnas.96.9.5095 PMC Full Text View journal details
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