Sets and Subsets of Mutating Amino Acids in Zika Virus Polyprotein

Abstract

In this communication the results of a study of Shannon information entropy (H) of ZIKV polyprotein sequences downloaded from the NCBI Zika Virus Resource (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ genome/viruses/variation/Zika/) on 21 Nov 2016. The dataset download consisted of the complete set of ZIKV full-length polyprotein sequences isolated either from humans (n=123) or from Aedes aegypti mosquitos (n=14). Sequence management was facilitated with Jalview 2.9.0b2 [5]. H was computed by the equation of Shannon [6], using Anaconda 2.4.0 (64-bit), Python 2.7.10, Numpy 1.10.1, Scipy 0.16.0 and Matplotlib 1.4.3. The Mann-Whitney nonparametric U test was performed with Scipy stats; a two-tail p-value is reported. Modeling of the data by sets and subsets was performed with Maple 18 (Maplesoft Group, Canada). Z-tests were performed using 1000 pseudo-random trials and are reported with two-tail probabilities.