Reassortment
viruses showing mixing of the genetic material
Reassortment is the mixing of the genetic material of a species into new combinations in different individuals. The product of reassortment is called a reassortant. It is particularly used when two similar viruses that are infecting the same cell exchange genetic material. More specifically, it refers to the swapping of entire segments of the genome, which only occurs between viruses with segmented genomes.
(All known viruses with segmented genomes are RNA viruses. When only part of a nucleic acid molecule is changed by swapping, the process is instead known as recombination.)
Flu virus
The classical example of reassortment is seen in the influenza viruses, whose genomes consist of eight distinct segments of RNA. These segments act like mini-chromosomes, and each time a flu virus is assembled, it requires one copy of each segment.
If a single host (a human, a chicken, or other animal) is infected by two different strains of the influenza virus, then it is possible that new assembled viral particles will be created from segments whose origin is mixed, some coming from one strain and some coming from another. The new reassortant strain will share properties of both of its parental lineages.
Reassortment is responsible for some of the major antigenic shifts in the history of the influenza virus. In the 1957 "Asian flu" and 1968 "Hong Kong flu" pandemics, flu strains were caused by reassortment between an avian virus and a human virus.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reassortment” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.