Phylogenetic evidence for the rapid evolution of human B19 erythrovirus

Human B19 erythrovirus is a ubiquitous viral pathogen, commonly infecting individuals before adulthood. As with all autonomous parvoviruses, its small single-stranded DNA genome is replicated with host cell machinery. While the mechanism of parvovirus genome replication has been studied in detail, the rate at which B19 virus evolves is unknown. By inferring the phylogenetic history and evolutionary dynamics of temporally sampled B19 sequences, we observed a surprisingly high rate of evolutionary change, at approximately 10(-4) nucleotide substitutions per site per year. This rate is more typical of RNA viruses and suggests that high mutation rates are characteristic of the Parvoviridae.