A faster way for virus to evolve?

I happened to make a casual search using the search engines of good ol' NCBI when I happened to come across this interesting paper published twenty years ago in 1987. The authors worked on the Sendai virus and found that aged virion particles tend to fuse with each other (Kim and Okada, 1987). There is greater tendency for virions to fuse as they age. This could be attributed to a variation of the skeletal protein found on the membrane envelope that prevents membrane fusion. There is a possibility that a particular virus that could express a particular viral protein on its capsid that mimics a receptor that allows another virus to dock and transfer its genetic material. However, I have yet to find a research paper on that, hence, I stated it as a possibility. The implication is that two different viruses can combine their genetic material and rapidly combine years of evolutionary advantages and immediately eliminate weaknesses.

Currently, there are two ways in which viruses could evolve - antigen shift and antigen drift. This resulted in influenza outbreaks and devastating pandemics such as the 1918 Spanish flu, and in recent times, the Avian flu. The process of antigen drift involves point mutations, resulting in amino acid changes to the sequence of haemagluttinin and neuraminidase. The process of antigen shift involves simultaneous infection of a cell by two viruses, which results in reassortment of genetic information in order to produce a new subtype of virus.

A paper was published a year after Kim and Okada in 1988 whereby the authors have discovered that Influenza and Sendai virions could fuse with prokaryotic cells. The authors found a high degree of fusion between Influenza or Sendai virions with Mycoplasma bacterium, a ubiquitous bacteria that can be pathogenic and are often found in research laboratories as contaminants in cell culture. The distinct possibility is that the bacterium that is ever ubiquitous and lurking in the darkest recesses in plentiful numbers unseen to the naked eye can serve as a vehicle for antigen shift. Imagine if two different strains of influenza were to fuse with the Mycoplasma bacterium. There could be a potential reassortment of genetic material producing a new subtype of Influenza virus.


Citations
1) Citovsky V, Rottem S, Nussbaum O, Laster Y, Rott R, Loyter A. Animal viruses are able to fuse with prokaryotic cells. Fusion between Sendai or influenza virions and Mycoplasma. J Biol Chem. 1988 Jan 5;263(1):461-7.

2) Kim J, Okada Y. Difference in capacities for virion-to-virion fusion of young and aged HVJ (Sendai virus): a model of membrane fusion. J Membr Biol. 1987;97(3):241-9.