Tembusu virus (TMUV) has caused significant economic losses in the Chinese duck industry and may have been overlooked regarding its zoonotic transmission potential. A novel TMUV isolate (named CQW1) was separated from the liver tissue of a young duck in Southwest China. The CQW1 isolate proliferated in embryonated duck eggs and led to death within 3-4 days post-inoculation. Furthermore, CQW1 replicated in duck embryo fibroblast (DEF) cells and caused a cytopathic effect (CPE). The disease emerged on a duck farm in Southwest China and was reproduced by animal experiment. We found that CQW1 was detectable by RT-PCR in brain and liver tissues of dead ducklings within 5 days after inoculation. Most importantly, concentrated nuclei, neuronophagia and microglial nodules were observed in the brain tissue of the inoculated ducklings, and additionally, the liver tissue was affected, mainly by disordered lobular architecture, degeneration, necrosis and regenerated hepatocytes. Analysis of the complete genome sequence showed that CQW1 was 10,992 nt in length with two nucleotide insertions and shared 96.8% to 99.1% and 98.4% to 99.6% identity at nucleotide and amino acid level, respectively, with Chinese isolates. Phylogenetic analysis of the nucleotide sequences demonstrated that the CQW1 isolate was closely related to other members of the genus Flavivirus and formed a new clade together with the GX2013H isolate. Also, the CQW1 isolate demonstrated the highest average pairwise distance value among the Chinese isolates. In the present study, we obtained evidence that TMUV is present in Southwest China. Extensive pathological and epidemiological studies are urgently needed.
Background The black widow spider has both extraordinarily neurotoxic venom and three-dimensional cobwebs composed of diverse types of silk. However, a high-quality reference genome for the black widow spider was still unavailable, which hindered deep understanding and application of the valuable biomass. Findings We assembled the Latrodectus elegans genome, including a genome size of 1.57 Gb with contig N50 of 4.34 Mb and scaffold N50 of 114.31 Mb. Hi-C scaffolding assigned 98.08% of the genome to 14 pseudo-chromosomes, and with BUSCO, completeness analysis revealed that 98.4% of the core eukaryotic genes were completely present in this genome. Annotation of this genome identified that repetitive sequences account for 506.09 Mb (32.30%) and 20,167 protein-coding genes, and specifically, we identified 55 toxin genes and 26 spidroins and provide preliminary analysis of their composition and evolution. Conclusions We present the first chromosome-level genome assembly of a black widow spider and provide substantial toxin and spidroin gene resources. These high-qualified genomic data add valuable resources from a representative spider group and contribute to deep exploration of spider genome evolution, especially in terms of the important issues on the diversification of venom and web-weaving pattern. The sequence data are also firsthand templates for further application of the spider biomass.
Early domestication and the following improvement are two important processes in the cocoon silk evolution of silkworms. In contrast to early domestication, understanding of the improvement process is still fuzzy. By systematically comparing the larval silk gland transcriptomes of the wild, early domestic, and improved silkworms, we highlighted a novel landscape of transcriptome in the silk glands of improved ones. We first clarified that silk cocoon protein genes were up-regulated in modern breeding but not in early domestication. Furthermore, we found that differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between improved and early domestic silkworms (2711), as well as between improved and wild silkworms (2264), were obviously more than those between the early domestic and wild silkworms (158), with 1671 DEGs specific in the improved silkworm (IS-DEGs). Hierarchical clustering of all the DEGs consistently indicated that improved silkworms were significantly diverged from the early domestic and wild silkworms, suggesting that modern breeding might cause prompt and drastic dynamic changes of gene expression in the silk gland. We further paid attention to these 1671 IS-DEGs and were surprised to find that down-regulated genes were enriched in basic organonitrogen compound biosynthesis, RNA biosynthesis, and ribosome biogenesis processes, which are generally universally expressed, whereas those up-regulated genes were enriched in organonitrogen compound catabolic processes and functions involving in the dynamic regulation of protein post-translation of modification. We finally highlighted one candidate improvement gene among these up-regulated IS-DEGs, i.e., GDAP2, which may play roles in silk behavior and the overall robustness of the improved silkworm. The findings strongly suggest that modern breeding may facilitate effective control of the basic consumption of nitrogen and a stronger switch of nitrogen resources from other tissues to the silk glands, for an efficient supply for silk production, and implies the importance of brain behavior and robustness in silk yield improvement of modern breeding.
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