A reassessment of the evolutionary timescale of bat rabies viruses based upon glycoprotein gene sequences.

ABSTRACT: Rabies, an acute progressive encephalomyelitis caused by viruses in the genus Lyssavirus, is one of the oldest known infectious diseases. Although dogs and other carnivores represent the greatest threat to public health as rabies reservoirs, it is commonly accepted that bats are the primary evolutionary hosts of lyssaviruses. Despite early historical documentation of rabies, molecular clock analyses indicate a quite young age of lyssaviruses, which is confusing. For example, the results obtained for partial and complete nucleoprotein gene sequences of rabies viruses (RABV), or for a limited number of glycoprotein gene sequences, indicated that the time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) for current bat RABV diversity in the Americas lies in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries a

SUBMITTER: Kuzmina NA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7088765 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature