Estimation of the number of virus particles transmitted by an insect vector

• Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2007-11, Vol.104 (45), p.17891-17896
• Main Authors: Moury, Benoît, Fabre, Frédéric, Senoussi, Rachid
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Agricultural sciences; Animals; Aphididae; Aphidoidea; Aphids - virology; Biological Sciences; Capsicum annuum; Disease transmission; epidemiology; Genetic drift; Genetics; Infections; Inoculation; insect vectors; Insect Vectors - virology; Insects; Life Sciences; Microbiology and Parasitology; peppers; Phytopathology and phytopharmacy; Plant Diseases - virology; Plant pathology; Plant viruses; population bottleneck; Population genetics; Population size; Potato virus Y; Potyvirus; Potyvirus - isolation & purification; Potyvirus - pathogenicity; Solanum tuberosum - virology; Stochastic models; strain differences; strains; Vegetal Biology; Virions; Virology; Virulence; Virus Diseases - transmission; Viruses; Viruses - isolation & purification
• ISSN: 0027-8424; 1091-6490
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0702739104

Plant viruses are submitted to narrow population bottlenecks both during infection of their hosts and during horizontal transmission between host individuals. The size of bottlenecks exerted on virus populations during plant invasion has been estimated in a few pathosystems but is not addressed yet for horizontal transmission. Using competition for aphid transmission between two Potato virus Y variants, one of them being noninfectious but equally transmissible, we obtained estimates of the size of bottlenecks exerted on an insect-borne virus during its horizontal transmission. We found that an aphid transmitted on average 0.5-3.2 virus particles, which is extremely low compared with the census viral population into a plant. Such narrow bottlenecks emphasize the strength of stochastic events acting on virus populations, and we illustrate, in modeling virus emergence, why estimating this parameter is important.