Evolution in a chronic RNA virus infection: selection on HTLV-I tax protein differs between healthy carriers and patients with tropical spastic paraparesis.

Abstract excerpt

HTLV-I causes T-cell leukemia and tropical spastic paraparesis (TSP) in a minority of infected people, whereas the majority remain healthy. The virus differs little in sequence between isolates but has been shown to have a quasispecies structure. Using the Nei and Gojobori algorithm, we have shown that the proportion of nonsynonymous to synonymous changes in HTLV-I proviral tax gene sequences from healthy...

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