Flow of Information during an Evolutionary Process: The Case of Influenza A Viruses

Abstract

The hypothesis that Mutual Information (MI) dendrograms of influenza Aviruses reflect informational groups generated during viral evolutionary processes is putforward. Phylogenetic reconstructions are used for guidance and validation of MIdendrograms. It is found that MI profiles display an oscillatory behavior for each of theeight RNA segments of influenza A. It is shown that dendrograms of MI values ofgeographically and historically different segments coming from strains of RNA virusinfluenza A turned out to be unexpectedly similar to the clusters, but not with the topologyof the phylogenetic trees. No matter how diverse the RNA sequences are, MI dendrogramscrisply discern actual viral subtypes together with gain and/or losses of information thatoccur during viral evolution. The amount of information during a century of evolution ofRNA segments of influenza A is measured in terms of bits of information for both humanand avian strains. Overall the amount of information of segments of pandemic strainsoscillates during viral evolution. To our knowledge this is the first description of clades ofinformation of the viral subtypes and the estimation of the flow content of information,measured in bits, during an evolutionary process of a virus. © 2013 by the authors.