Viral adaptation to host: a proteome-based analysis of codon usage and amino acid preferences

Bahir, Iris; Fromer, Menachem; Prat, Yosef; Linial, Michal

Viruses show appreciable variation in the selectivity with which they infect host organisms. Some viruses infect a broad range of species, whereas others infect only a single host. A successful viral infection requires that the virus possess the capability to enter the host cell and take over cellular functions and direct them toward the efficient production of new viruses. Most viruses recognize their respective hosts through membrane receptors that have a role in host physiology. Examples of such receptors are gangliosides, heparan sulfate moieties, and integrins (Garrigues et al, 2008) , which act as the cell receptors for simian virus 40 (SV40), human cytomegalovirus (HHV-5), and human herpesvirus 8 (HHV8), respectively. In stark contrast, for some viruses, host range is not limited to the recognition stage (McFadden, 2005) . For example, poxviruses bind to and enter a wide range of mammalian cells, but a fruitful replication cycle occurs only in a restricted set of hosts. Replication of poxviruses involves the host cell cycle, signal transduction, transcription factors, phosphatases, and interferon-induced mediators. Therefore, the features that govern the host range for poxvirus seem to involve a rich collection of host genes (McFadden, 2005) .