Identification of African swine fever virus-like elements in the soft tick genome provides insights into the virus' evolution.

ABSTRACT:

Background

African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a most devastating pathogen affecting swine. In 2007, ASFV was introduced into Eastern Europe where it continuously circulates and recently reached Western Europe and Asia, leading to a socio-economic crisis of global proportion. In Africa, where ASFV was first described in 1921, it is transmitted between warthogs and soft ticks of the genus Ornithodoros in a so-called sylvatic cycle. However, analyses into this virus' evolution are aggravated by the absence of any closely related viruses. Even ancient endogenous viral elements, viral sequences integrated into a host's genome many thousand years ago that have proven extremely valuable to analyse virus evolution, remain to be identified. Therefore, the evolution of ASFV, the only known

SUBMITTER: Forth JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7542975 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature