The Energetic Cost of Building a Virus

TL;DR

This study estimates the energetic costs of viral synthesis for DNA and RNA viruses, revealing translation as the most expensive process and how costs scale with virus size, impacting host energy budgets and evolutionary dynamics.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed quantitative estimates of the energetic costs of viral synthesis, comparing different viruses and analyzing how costs scale with virus size.

Findings

Translation is the most energetically expensive process in viral synthesis.

A T4 phage costs about a third of its host's energy, while influenza costs only 1%.

Viral costs scale with size, shifting from translation to genome replication above a critical size.

Abstract

Viruses are incapable of autonomous energy production. Although many experimental studies make it clear that viruses are parasitic entities that hijack the host's molecular resources, a detailed estimate for the energetic cost of viral synthesis is largely lacking. To quantify the energetic cost of viruses to their hosts, we enumerated the costs associated with two very distinct but representative DNA and RNA viruses, namely T4 and influenza. We found that for these viruses, translation of viral proteins is the most energetically expensive process. Interestingly, the cost of building a T4 phage and a single influenza virus are nearly the same. Due to influenza's higher burst size, however, the overall cost of a T4 phage infection is only 2-3% of the cost of an influenza infection. The costs of these infections relative to their host's estimated energy budget during the infection reveal that a T4 infection consumes about a third of its host's energy budget, where as an influenza infection consumes only 1%. Building on our estimates for T4, we show how the energetic costs of double-stranded DNA viruses scale with virus size, revealing that the dominant cost of building a virus can switch from translation to genome replication above a critical virus size. Lastly, using our predictions for the energetic cost of viruses, we provide estimates for the strengths of selection and genetic drift acting on newly incorporated genetic elements in viral genomes, under conditions of energy limitation.