Scientific Publications

Cyprinid herpesvirus 3

Students in the Bioinformatics, Knowledge and Data (BCD) section of the Sciences et Numérique pour la Santé Master's program (supervisor: Anna-Sophie Fiston-Lavier) and those in the IMHE Master's program (supervisor: Anne-Sophie Gosselin) have just published an international scientific article in thejournalViruses.

This cross-disciplinary collaborative project, initiated by Anne-Sophie Gosselin (lecturer/researcher in the Bio-MV department), Jean-Christophe Avarre (ISEM-IRD researcher) and Anna-Sophie Fiston-Lavier (lecturer/researcher in the Computer Science department) during MontpellierOmics Days, aimed to decompartmentalize these courses by enabling students to share their skills on a real research project.

The publication, entitled Cyprinid herpesvirus 3Evolves In Vitro through an Assemblage of Haplotypes that Alternatively Become Dominant or Under-Represented"was accepted this summer in the journalViruses. The contribution of the students was highly valued, as all the students in the classes of both courses were co-authors of the paper.

Article abstract:

In this publication, the authors worked on the evolution of cyprinid herpes virus type 3 (CyHV-3), a 295-kilobase double-stranded DNA virus, the causative agent of carp herpesvirus (KHVD). Experimental evolution experiments were carried out in vitro by serially passing a CyHV-3 isolate on common carp cells and assessing the virulence of the virus over the passages. After 78 passages in cell culture, the isolate proved much less virulent than the initial isolate. Comparative genomic analysis of the viruses before and after passage 78 revealed a limited number of variations, the most notable being a deletion of 1363 base pairs in the virus 150 gene. It is interesting to note that this deletion, which is in the majority in the viral genomes after 78 passages, is not detected in the wild-type form of the virus (before passage) or after 99 passages. These results, confirmed by digital PCR, suggest that CyHV-3 evolves, at least in vitro, through a dynamic assembly of viral haplotypes, which become alternately dominant or under-represented.