Recombinant and Wild-Type Nucleopolyhedroviruses are Equally Fit in Mixed Infections
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The recombinant nucleopolyhedrovirus of Autographa californica Speyer (AcMNPV-AaIT) expressing the paralyzing toxin of scorpions (Androtoctonus australis Hector) kills caterpillars 30% faster than wild-type (wt) AcMNPV, and shows a great deal of promise as a bioinsecticide. Although it is generally believed that genetically modified organisms are less fit than their derived wild type and will not persist in the environment, a thorough assessment of the ecological risks associated with the release of AcMNPV-AaIT must be conducted before its commercialization. In this study, we focus on one aspect and compare the fitness of AcMNPV-AaIT and wt-AcMNPV during intra-host competition. Cabbage loopers (Trichoplusia ni Hübner) were synchronously or asynchronously infected with wt-AcMNPV and AcMNPV-AaIT, and the polymerase chain reaction was used to monitor the outcome of intra-host competition. There was no indication that AcMNPV-AaIT was less fit than wt-AcMNPV when T. ni were synchronously fed equal doses of each NPV. Serially passing the occlusion bodies had little effect on the persistence of AcMNPV-AaIT. After seven passages, the recombinant virus was found alone or with wt-AcMNPV in 71% (12/17) of replicates whereas wt-AcMNPV occurred alone or mixed in 88% (15/17) of replicates. Dose and synchrony of infection both affected the outcome of intra-host competition. The virus with the highest dose and the first one given to T. ni had a significant competitive advantage. Finally, the AaIT insert appeared to be stable because there was no evidence that it got deleted from the recombinant genome even after AcMNPV-AaIT was serially passed seven times in T. ni. As a complementary study, we also examined intra-host competition between two wild type NPVs, wt-AcMNPV and the single nucleocapsid (S) nucleopolyhedrovirus of T. ni (TnSNPV). Our results suggest that the two viruses are equally fit during intra-host competition. Serially passing the occlusion bodies did not influence the outcome but NPV dose and synchrony of infection were again strong determinants of intra-host competition.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".