Presence of Segmented Flavivirus Infections in North America

Identifying viruses in synanthropic animals is necessary for understanding the origin of many viruses that can infect humans and developing strategies to prevent new zoonotic infections. The white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, is one of the most abundant rodent species in the northeastern Unite...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emerging infectious diseases 2020-08, Vol.26 (8), p.1810-1817
Main Authors: Vandegrift, Kurt J, Kumar, Arvind, Sharma, Himanshu, Murthy, Satyapramod, Kramer, Laura D, Ostfeld, Richard, Hudson, Peter J, Kapoor, Amit
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Arachnids
Bioinformatics
Flavivirus - genetics
Flavivirus Infections - epidemiology
Flavivirus Infections - veterinary
Genomes
Infection
Infections
Mice
New England
North America - epidemiology
Pennsylvania - epidemiology
Proteins
Rodents
Viruses
Zoonoses
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Summary:Identifying viruses in synanthropic animals is necessary for understanding the origin of many viruses that can infect humans and developing strategies to prevent new zoonotic infections. The white-footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus, is one of the most abundant rodent species in the northeastern United States. We characterized the serum virome of 978 free-ranging P. leucopus mice caught in Pennsylvania. We identified many new viruses belonging to 26 different virus families. Among these viruses was a highly divergent segmented flavivirus whose genetic relatives were recently identified in ticks, mosquitoes, and vertebrates, including febrile humans. This novel flavi-like segmented virus was found in rodents and shares ≤70% aa identity with known viruses in the highly conserved region of the viral polymerase. Our data will enable researchers to develop molecular reagents to further characterize this virus and its relatives infecting other hosts and to curtail their spread, if necessary.
ISSN:1080-6040
1080-6059
DOI:10.3201/eid2608.190986