Human rhinoviruses (RVs) of the A, B, and C species are defined agents of the common cold. But more than that, RV-A and RV-C are the dominant causes of hospitalization category infections in young children, especially those with asthma. The use of cadherin-related family member 3 (CDHR3) by RV-C as its cellular receptor creates a direct phenotypic link between human genetics (G versus A alleles cause Cys529 versus Tyr529 protein variants) and the efficiency with which RV-C can infect cells. With a lower cell surface display density, the human-specific Cys529 variant apparently confers partial protection from the severest virus-induced asthma episodes. Selective pressure favoring the Cys529 codon may have coemerged with the evolution of RV-C and helped shape modern human genomes against the virus-susceptible, albeit ancestral Tyr529.
Keywords: asthma; cadherin structure; common cold; paleogenetics; rhinovirus C.
Copyright © 2017 American Society for Microbiology.