Aguirre Sánchez, EduardoBeperet Arive, InésWilliams, TrevorCaballero Murillo, Primitivo2021-09-282021-09-2820211999-4915 (Electronic)10.3390/v13101895https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/40586The mechanisms generating variability in viruses are diverse. Variability allows baculoviruses to evolve with their host and with changes in their environment. We examined the role of one genetic variant of Chrysodeixis includens nucleopolyhedrovirus (ChinNPV) and its contribution to the variability of the virus under laboratory conditions. A mixture of natural isolates (ChinNPVMex1) contained two genetic variants that dominated over other variants in individual larvae that consumed high (ChinNPV-K) and low (ChinNPV-E) concentrations of inoculum. Studies on the ChinNPV-K variant indicated that it was capable of generating novel variation in a concentrationdependent manner. In cell culture, cells inoculated with high concentrations of ChinNPV-K produced OBs with the ChinNPV-K REN profile, whereas a high diversity of ChinNPV variants was recovered following plaque purification of low concentrations of ChinNPV-K virion inoculum. Interestingly, the ChinNPV-K variant could not be recovered from plaques derived from low concentration inocula originating from budded virions or occlusion-derived virions of ChinNPV-K. Genome sequencing revealed marked differences between ChinNPV-K and ChinNPV-E, with high variation in the ChinNPV-K genome, mostly due to single nucleotide polymorphisms. We conclude that ChinNPV-K is an unstable genetic variant that is responsible for generating much of the detected variability in the natural ChinNPV isolates used in this study.application/pdfeng© 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licenseChinNPVVariabilityPrevalenceSNPsConcentrationChrysodeixis includensArtículo / ArtikuluaAcceso abierto / Sarbide irekiainfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess