First direct evidence of selection on HIV set-point viral load
Compelling arguments for HIV set-point viral load to be a heritable viral phenotype under stabilizing selection were proposed more than a decade ago, but the existence of such selection pressures has never been directly proven on an epidemic scale. In collaboration with my postdoc Lele Zhao, we have applied phylodynamic approaches to viral sequence data from the BEEHIVE collaboration (Bridging Evolution and Epidemiology of HIV in Europe) and we have demonstrated for the first time that the inferred HIV fitness actually depends on viral load as predicted [1].
L Zhao, C Wymant, F Blanquart, T Golubchik, A Gall, M Bakker et al, C Fraser and L Ferretti, “Phylogenetic estimation of the viral fitness landscape of HIV-1 set-point viral load”, Virus Evolution, 8(1), veac022 (2022).
A hypervirulent variant of HIV
Discovery and epidemiological characterisation of a new HIV lineage with high transmissibility and virulence that has been spreading in the Netherlands since 1998.
C Wymant, D Bezemer, F Blanquart, L Ferretti, A Gall, M Hall et al, C Fraser, “A highly virulent variant of HIV-1 circulating in the Netherlands”, Science, 375(6580), 540-545 (2022).