Figure 3.

Within-host competitive fitness of the evolved and ancestral lineages. Fitness W, as determined by competition experiments and RT-qPCR, of the different viral genotypes with a duplication of NIb (A) and with NIb moved to an alternative position (B) with wild-type TEV and healthy control plants with respect to a common competitor, TEV-eGFP. In A, the competition experiment was started with an inoculum containing a 1:1 mixture of both competitors, while a 1:10 mixture (common competitor and virus of interest) was used in B. The ancestral lineages are indicated with light-gray bars and the evolved lineages with dark-gray bars. The viruses in A were evolved using five replicate lineages each (L1–L5) for a total of 27 weeks, and viruses in B were evolved using seven replicate lineages each (L1–L7) for a total of 36 weeks. Evolved lineages that tested significantly different compared to their ancestral lineage are indicated with an asterisk (t-test with Holm-Bonferroni correction for multiple tests).