A Bioinformatics Pipeline for the Analyses of Viral Escape Dynamics and Host Immune Responses during an Infection

Abstract EN

Rapidly mutating viruses, such as hepatitis C virus (HCV) and HIV, have adopted evolutionary strategies that allow escape from the host immune response via genomic mutations.

Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing are reshaping the field of immuno-virology of viral infections, as these allow fast and cheap generation of genomic data.

However, due to the large volumes of data generated, a thorough understanding of the biological and immunological significance of such information is often difficult.

This paper proposes a pipeline that allows visualization and statistical analysis of viral mutations that are associated with immune escape.

Taking next generation sequencing data from longitudinal analysis of HCV viral genomes during a single HCV infection, along with antigen specific T-cell responses detected from the same subject, we demonstrate the applicability of these tools in the context of primary HCV infection.

We provide a statistical and visual explanation of the relationship between cooccurring mutations on the viral genome and the parallel adaptive immune response against HCV.