SUPPLEMENT - BIOINFORMATICS AND HEALTH

In the present study, we investigated the nucleotide polymorphisms among the four genotypes of the Dengue virus - DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3 and DENV-4 - by qualitative and quantitative characterization. We studied the Nucleotide Substitution Density (NSD) along each genome identifying the regions with higher degree of mutation and/or conservation. Then, we calculated the Average Nucleotide Substitution Density (ANSD) for each serotype. We observed that the ANSD of DENV-2 is larger than for DENV-1 by 44.21%, DENV-3 by 85%, and DENV-4 by 163.31%. In contrast to DENV-2 and DENV-4, DENV-1 and DENV-3 showed a similar mutational behavior. The NS5 domain from DENV-2 that corresponds to the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase also has a higher mutation rate compared to that of the other DENVs. This suggests that the polymorphism and the virulence can be correlated in DENV-2, which could contribute to the understanding of the disease evolution.