Group A Rotavirus NSP4 is Under Negative Selective Pressure

Rotavirus (RV) is the major etiologic agent of severe infantile gastroenteritis; its genome has 11 segments of double stranded RNA, encoding 12 proteins. The non-structural protein 4 (NSP4) encoded by segment 10 is multifunctional. The aim of this study is to analyze the selective pressure driving the NSP4 of RV, through the ratio of non-synonymous substitutions per synonymous substitutions (dN/dS). Our results show that NSP4 is under negative evolutionary pressure (84.57% of the amino acid sequence) and no site was found under positive selection. This may support other evolutionary studies of different RV proteins or viral agents.