Why viruses sometimes disperse in groups?†

Abstract

Many organisms disperse in groups, yet this process is understudied in viruses. Recent work, however, has uncovered different types of collective infectious units, all of which lead to the joint delivery of multiple viral genome copies to target cells, favoring co-infections. Collective spread of viruses can occur through widely different mechanisms, including virion aggregation driven by specific extracellular components, cloaking inside lipid vesicles, encasement in protein matrices, or binding to cell surfaces. Cell-to-cell viral spread, which allows the transmission of individual virions in a confined environment, is yet another mode of clustered virus dissemination. Nevertheless, the selective advantages of dispersing in groups remain poorly understood in most cases. Collective dispersal might have emerged as a means of sharing efficacious viral transmission vehicles. Alternatively, increasing the cellular multiplicity of infection may confer certain short-term benefits to viruses, such as overwhelming antiviral responses, avoiding early stochastic loss of viral components required for initiating infection, or complementing genetic defects present in different viral genomes. However, increasing infection multiplicity may also entail long-term costs, such as mutation accumulation and the evolution of defective particles or other types of cheater viruses. These costs and benefits, in turn, should depend on the genetic relatedness among collective infectious unit members. Establishing the genetic basis of collective viral dispersal and performing controlled experiments to pinpoint fitness effects at different spatial and temporal scales should help us clarify the implications of these spread modes for viral fitness, pathogenicity, and evolution.

Keywords: collective infectious unit; dispersal; multiplicity of infection; viral spread; viral transmission.

Figure 1.

Summary of collective dispersal modes in viruses. In some cases, virions in the extracellular milieu, which can potentially originate from different cells, are subsequently clustered by different mechanisms, including HIV-1 concentration in dendritic cells (DCs) attachment to bacterial cells from the host microbiota (enteroviruses), or virion aggregation (VSV in semen, VSV in saliva). In other cases, pools of virions originating from the same cell undergo co-dispersion. This is the case of viral biofilms (HTLV-1), virions encapsulated in extracellular vesicles (HAV, enteroviruses, marseilleviruses, rotaviruses, and noroviruses), and baculovirus OBs. Cell-to-cell spread is yet another process whereby multiple virions are jointly transferred between cells.