Developing H5N1 Avian Influenza Mutation and Evolution Feature Analysis and Web Service

The continuous mutation and evolution of H5N1 may cause a wide spread of the epidemic, however, the mechanism of H5N1 mutation and evolution are still unclear. Therefore, further mining the overall evolutionary pattern of H5N1 sequences, studying the impact of global factors such as migratory bird flyways on H5N1 evolution, and constructing a corresponding web service are crucial for preventing potential future H5N1 epidemics. To this end, we firstly analyzed the within-host mutation features of H5N1 sequences and optimized the phylogenetic model. Secondly, we employed the optimized model to construct the phylogenetic trees and performed H5N1 evolution group analysis. Thirdly, we not only analyzed the correlation between different evolution groups of H5N1 and global migratory bird flyways, but also investigated the impact of the El Niño climate phenomenon on the evolution of H5N1. Finally, we built up a web service for H5N1 mutation and evolution analysis and visualization. Our main results include: (1) We found that the global H5N1 can be categorized into three major evolution groups at different time in various geographic regions. (2) We not only found that all three major groups of HA fragments were related to the East Asian -Australasian flyway of migratory birds, but also demonstrated the correlation and causality between the Oceanic Niño Index and the alternation of old and new evolutionary groups of H5N1. (3) VP-H5N1 provides a fast and easy-to-use web service platform for online analysis and visualization of H5N1 evolution.