Figuring out if genome shuffling is important for influenza host switching.
With its segmented genome, influenza viruses can reassort with other influenza viruses to produce hybrid progeny. Think of it as being like shuffling a red and a blue deck of cards in a box, and picking out each member of the suite at random.
As part of my thesis work, I developed an phylogenetic heuristic algorithm to identify reassortant influenza viruses. Using this method, my colleagues and I were able to show that reassortment is over-represented (relative to a null model) when crossing between viral hosts; additionally, the more evolutionarily distant two viral hosts were, the more over-represented reassortment was.
This may generalize across domains of life, where reticulate evolution enables organisms to more easily switch between ecological niches.