Genomics of Human Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccine Attenuation

Abstract

The human orthopneumovirus (HRSV) is a major cause of lower respiratory tract infection in children worldwide. Despite decades of efforts, no vaccine is available. In this work, we report mutations that are frequent in vaccine candidates and rare in wild-type genomes, taking into account all the publicly available HRSV sequence data. These mutations are different from the ones already known to attenuate the virus, and thus may contribute to the effort towards producing a live attenuated vaccine against HRSV.