The “pressure pan” evolution of human erythrovirus B19 in the Amazon, Brazil

Abstract To understand the evolutionary dynamics of human parvovirus B19, we analyzed VP1 and VP2 gene sequences of B19 sampled from Belém (Amazon), the city of São Paulo, Brazil and globally. Our analysis revealed a strikingly different pattern of evolutionary change for those viral lineages introduced into Belém, which exhibited a higher rate of nonsynonymous substitutions compared to those viruses sampled from other locations. We propose that difference this is due to the high prevalence of B19 in Belém (up to 85%) compared to other locations (prevalences of approximately 50%), which imposes a more intense selection pressure. Hence, those B19 lineages introduced into Belém experienced an elevated rate of amino acid change, driven by positive selection, in order to generate serial re-infections in a small web of transmission, which can be thought of as an evolutionary “pressure pan”.