Isabel Novella, Ph.D.
|  | Professor 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听 听
                                 听 听 听 听 听 听听 The evolution of RNA virus populations Office: HEB 231 Dean's Award for Mentoring, 2006 听 | 
| Isabel Novella studies the evolution of viruses and how this knowledge can help fight
                              viral infections. Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) is used as a model to study specific aspects of virus evolution and general
                              issues of population genetics. VSV is grouped together with important pathogens (measles,
                              influenza, poliovirus, HIV, hepatitis A, B and C viruses, etc.) among viruses whose
                              genomic information is stored in RNA instead of DNA. This is important because RNA
                              replication is error-prone, and therefore many mutations are constantly produced that
                              allow extremely rapid evolution. We carry out experiments in which we allow virus
                              replication under different conditions and analyze how these different conditions
                              affect changes in fitness (replicative ability) and in genome sequences. The tools
                              of molecular biology can now be used to test how different mutations may or may not
                              cause specific phenotypes. Novella, I.S., Presloid, J.B., Smith, S.D., and Wilke, C.O. (2011). Specific and non-specific
                              host adaptation during arboviral experimental evolution. J. Mol. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 21:59-69 .听听 Incongruent fitness landscapes, not tradeoffs, dominate the adaptation of vesicular
                                                   stomatitis virus to novel host types.听 Journal of General Virology (2010) 91(Pt6):1484-1493,听Epub 2010 Jan 27. 听 (2009) The rhabdoviruses: biodiversity, phylogenetics and evolution.听 Infect,Genet听 Evol.听9(4):541-53. Epub 2009 Feb 24. 听(2008) A linear relationship between fitness and the logarithm of the critical bottleneck size in vesicular stomatitis virus populations.听 J. Virol.听Oct 1; 82:12589-12590.听 .听 (2008) Antagonistic pleiotropy involving promoter sequences in a virus.听 J Mol Biol.听 (2004) Fitness analyses of vesicular stomatitis virus strains with rearranged genomes reveal replicative disadvantages. J. Virol., 78:9837-9841. (2004) Vesicular stomatitis virus evolution during alternation between persistent infection in insect cells and acute infection in mammalian cells is dominated by the persistence phase. J. Virol., 78:12236-12242. (2004) Molecular basis of fitness loss and fitness recovery in vesicular stomatitis virus. J. Mol. Biol., 342:1423-1430. (2004) Positive selection of synonymous mutations in an RNA virus. J. Mol. Biol., 342:1415-1421. (2004) Density-dependent selection in vesicular stomatitis virus. J. Virol., 78:5799-5804. (2004) Replication at periodically changing multiplicity of infection promotes stable coexistence of competing viral populations. Evolution, 58:900-905. (2004) Negative effect of genetic bottlenecks on the adaptability of vesicular stomatitis virus. J. Mol. Biol., 336:61-67.  (2003) Contributions of vesicular stomatitis virus to the understanding of RNA virus
                                 evolution. Current Opinion in Microbiology, 6:1-7.  (2001) Contingent neutrality in competing viral populations. J. Virol., 75:7315-7320.  | |