Gonzales JE 2nd, Kim I, Bastiray A, Hwang W, Cho J. Evolutionary rewiring of the dynamic network underpinning allosteric epistasis in NS1 of the influenza A virus. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Feb 25;122(8):e2410
Viral proteins frequently mutate to evade host innate immune responses, yet the impact of these mutations on the molecular energy landscape remains unclear. Epistasis, the intramolecular communications between mutations, often renders the combined mutational effects unpredictable. Nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) is a major virulence factor of the influenza A virus (IAV) that activates host PI3K by binding to its p85β subunit. Here, we present a deep analysis of the impact of evolutionary mutations in NS1 that emerged between the 1918 pandemic IAV strain and its descendant PR8 strain. Our analysis reveals how the mutations rewired interresidue communications, which underlie long-range allosteric and epistatic networks in NS1. Our findings show that PR8 NS1 binds to p85β with approximately 10-fold greater affinity than 1918 NS1 due to allosteric mutational effects, which are further tuned by epistasis. NMR chemical shift perturbation and methyl-axis order parameter analyses revealed that the mutations induced long-range structural and dynamic changes in PR8 NS1, relative to 1918 NS1, enhancing its affinity to p85β. Complementary molecular dynamics simulations and graph theory-based network analysis for conformational dynamics on the submicrosecond timescales uncover how these mutations rewire the dynamic network, which underlies the allosteric epistasis. Significantly, we find that conformational dynamics of residues with high betweenness centrality play a crucial role in communications between network communities and are highly conserved across influenza A virus evolution. These findings advance our mechanistic understanding of the allosteric and epistatic communications between distant residues and provide insight into their role in the molecular evolution of NS1.
See Also:
Latest articles in those days:
- [preprint]Inactivated Zoonotic Influenza A(H5N8) Vaccine Induces Robust Antibody Responses Against Recent Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza Clade 2.3.4.4b A(H5N1) Viruses 13 hours ago
- [preprint]Combing the haystacks: The search for highly pathogenic avian influenza virus using a combined clinical and research-developed testing strategy 13 hours ago
- Equine Influenza: Epidemiology, Pathogenesis, and Strategies for Prevention and Control 13 hours ago
- A programmable nucleic acid fluorescence biosensor based on the BstNI endonuclease for detection of the influenza A (H1N1) virus 13 hours ago
- Capacitive Biosensor for Rapid Detection of Avian (H5N1) Influenza and E. coli in Aerosols 13 hours ago
[Go Top] [Close Window]