Scientist’s cat helps discover a rare virus — yet again
A cat of a scientist made glory last year for his role in the discovery of Jeilongvirus from the first known in the United States. Now, the feline has reproduced its success by recovering another animal containing a bug never seen before.
The new virus was found in a short -tailed Musagaigne of dead Everglades (Blarina Peninsules), which pepper the cat brought home after a successful hunting trip near his home in Gainesville, Florida. John LednickyThe owner of Pepper and a virologist at the University of Florida, recovered the catches of his animal and took it to the laboratory for tests.
The results revealed that the Musagaire was carrying a strain of Orthoreovirus – An ill-understood viral genre which is known to infect birds and various mammals, including humans, white tail deer and bats. Lednicky and his colleagues published their conclusions on June 10 in the journal Ads of microbiology resources.
“The main thing is that we have to pay attention to orthoreovirus and know how to detect them quickly,” said Lednicky said in a press release. Indeed, there have been reported cases of which they caused a serious illness in humans.
Discovered for the first time in the 1950sOrthoreovirus propagate through poops or inhaled droplets and generally infect the respiratory or intestinal tracks of their hosts.
They were named “orphan virus” because they were not initially associated with known diseases – which means that scientists thought that they had not caused serious conditions. Since then, however, orthoreovirus have been linked to rare cases of swelling of the brain (encephalitis), swelling of the tissues on the surface of the brain (meningitis) and inflammation of the digestive road (gastroenteritis) in children, noted the declaration.
In relation: New viruses identified in bats in China
After isolating the Musarigne Virus Dead, Lednicky and his colleagues analyzed the genome of the virus and discovered that it was a new strain, which they named the mammal mammal tension of type 3 Gainesville.
The existence of the new strain is not surprising, because the viruses are constantly evolving and generates new strains. One way in which new strains can emerge is that two different viruses can infect a host cell at the same time, then exchange genes, noted Lednicky.
“I am not the first to say that, but essentially, if you look, you will find, and that is why we continue to find all these new viruses,” said Lednicky.
Researchers still have many questions about orthoreovirus, including the frequency they infect humans and animals, the way they might go and all the ways to spread. For example, Orthoreovirus with genes almost identical to each other have been found in deer in the United States, the breeding mink in China and a lion in Japan, which raises the possibility that they were transmitted through raw materials manufactured by the same manufacturer.
Researchers say that their next steps will expose the virus to the blood serum of potential hosts and immunology studies that lead better to better understand the threats that the strain found can pose to humans and fauna. For the moment, “he is not well known about this recently identified virus,” said the principal author of the study Emily Deruyter, doctoral candidate at the University of Florida, in the press release.
As for pepper, virologists say that he has not shown any signs of illness and will continue to contribute to scientific research by his hunt.
“It was an opportunistic study,” said Lednicky. “If you meet a dead animal, why not test it instead of simply burying it? There is a lot of information that can be won.”
