Abstract

In both human and mosquito, due to the nonproofreading nature of the RNA polymerase, dengue virus (DV) exists as a population made of a dynamic swarm of mutants that have genetically different but related genomes, commonly called quasi-specie1,2. In natural dengue transmission cycle, the viral population transmitted to the vector is the one present in the capillary blood of the infected human. This population might vary during the infectious period because of several constraints (sequence of infection, cellular tropism of the virus, history of infection, genetic factors…). Although at the intra-host level (human or mosquito) the frequency of non-synonymous mutations occurring in the genome of DV is high, it remains low at the inter-host level. The global genetic evolution of dengue viruses might be restricted by the application of a strong purifying selection, resulting from the combination of the selection pressures inherent to each host-specie3. In the present study, we compared the structures of DV population from human venous and capillary compartments, and we investigated the dynamic of DV population in capillary blood. Otherwise, to determine the impact of the constraints specific to each host-specie and those related to the alternated replication in the two host-species, we investigated the dynamic of DV population during passages in mammal and mosquito cell lines.