Revisiting Jenner's mysteries, the role of the Beaugency lymph in the evolutionary path of ancient smallpox vaccines

Damaso, Clarissa R.

doi:10.1016/s1473-3099(17)30445-0

Cited by 42 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Since there was no selective pressure to survive in a reservoir host, in vitro replication has favored evolution into pools of highly diverse quasi-species [22]. The genetic variation of VACVs described here mirrors results of recent full-genome analysis [23]. The authors conclude that VACV was once a circulating virus in animals in Europe in the 19th century that later disappeared in this reservoir.…”

Section: Hemagglutinin-based Phylogenetic Relationships Of Orthopoxvisupporting

confidence: 64%

Use of Next Generation Sequencing to study two cowpox virus outbreaks

Antwerpen

Georgi

Nikolic

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Background:Between 2008 and 2011 about 40 cases of human cowpox were reported from Germany and France. Infections had been acquired via close contact to infected, young pet rats.Sequencing of the hemagglutinin gene of various cowpox virus (CPXV) isolates resulted in an identical and unique sequence in each case pointing to a common source. In a second CPXV outbreak in cats in a small animal clinic in Germany in 2015, four out of five hospitalized cats showed identical hemagglutinin sequences and thus, a hospital-acquired transmission was assumed. Methods:Homogenates of lesion material from rats, cats and humans were cultivated in cell culture.The genomes of 4 virus isolates, 9 CPXVs from our strain collections and from DNA of 3 paraffin-embedded lesion materials were determined by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). For phylogenetic analyses a MAFFT-alignment was generated. A distance matrix based on concatenated SNPs was calculated and plotted as dendrogram using Unweighted Pair Group Method with Arithmetic mean (UPGMA) for visualization. Results:Aligning of about 200.000 nucleotides of 8 virus isolates associated with the pet rat outbreak revealed complete identity of six genomes, the remainder two genomes differed in as little as 3 SNPs. When comparing this dataset with four already published CPXV genomes also associated with the pet rat outbreak, again a maximum difference of 3 SNPs was found. The outbreak which lasted from 2008 till 2011 was indeed caused by a single strain which has maintained an extremely high level of clonality over 4 years.Aligning genomic sequences from 4 cases of feline cowpox revealed 3 identical sequences and one sequence which differed in 65 nucleotides. Although identical hemagglutinin sequences had been obtained from four hospitalized cats, genomic sequencing proved that a hospital-acquired transmission had occurred in only three cats. Discussion:Analyzing the rather short sequence of the hemagglutinin gene is not sufficient to conduct molecular trace back analyses. Instead, whole genome sequencing is the method of choice which can even be applied to paraffin-embedded specimens.

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Section: Hemagglutinin-based Phylogenetic Relationships Of Orthopoxvisupporting

confidence: 64%

Use of Next Generation Sequencing to study two cowpox virus outbreaks

Antwerpen

Georgi

Nikolic

et al. 2018

Preprint

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“…In particular, based on phylogenetic studies, we currently know that VACV is more closely related to horsepox than to cowpox virus . Horsepox has a wide spread infection among horses, causing sporadic infection in humans, and now is rare or eliminated in Europe and North America . Other Vaccinia‐like viruses infecting different animals were buffalopox virus (BPXV), causing diseases in Asian buffalos and occasionally zoonotic infections in humans and a virus causing outbreaks among cattle and dairy workers in Brazil, called Cantagalo virus .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian reconstruction of the evolutionary history and cross‐species transition of variola virus and orthopoxviruses

Zehender

Lai

Veo

et al. 2018

Journal of Medical Virology

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Variola virus (VARV), the causative agent of smallpox, is an exclusively human virus belonging to the genus Orthopoxvirus, which includes many other viral species covering a wide range of mammal hosts, such as vaccinia, cowpox, camelpox, taterapox, ectromelia, and monkeypox virus. The tempo and mode of evolution of Orthopoxviruses were reconstructed using a Bayesian phylodynamic framework by analysing 80 hemagglutinin sequences retrieved from public databases. Bayesian phylogeography was used to estimate their putative ancestral hosts. In order to estimate the substitution rate, the tree including all of the available Orthopoxviruses was calibrated using historical references dating the South American variola minor clade (alastrim) to between the XVI and XIX century. The mean substitution rate determined by the analysis was 6.5 × 10 substitutions/site/year. Based on this evolutionary estimate, the time of the most recent common ancestor of the genus Orthopoxvirus was placed at about 10 000 years before the present. Cowpox virus was the species closest to the root of the phylogenetic tree. The root of VARV circulating in the XX century was estimated to be about 700 years ago, corresponding to about 1300 AD. The divergence between West African and South American VARV went back about 500 years ago (falling approximately in the XVI century). A rodent species is the most probable ancestral host from which the ancestors of all the known Orthopoxviruses were transmitted to the other mammal host species, and each of these species represented a dead-end for each new poxvirus species, without any further inter-specific spread.

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“…Intriguingly, we now use a close relative of VarV, vaccinia virus (VacV), both as a vaccine and laboratory prototype for poxvirus infection. Mysteriously, we don’t know the true origin or natural host of VacV because of the lack of records and way in which vaccines were generated and shared across the globe in the earliest attempts to control smallpox [ 2 ]. Despite its mysterious origins, VacV was instrumental in making VarV the only human pathogen to have been successfully eradicated.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Poxviruses: Slipping and sliding through transcription and translation

Walsh

2017

PLoS Pathog

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Revisiting Jenner's mysteries, the role of the Beaugency lymph in the evolutionary path of ancient smallpox vaccines

Cited by 42 publications

References 64 publications

Use of Next Generation Sequencing to study two cowpox virus outbreaks

Use of Next Generation Sequencing to study two cowpox virus outbreaks

Bayesian reconstruction of the evolutionary history and cross‐species transition of variola virus and orthopoxviruses

Poxviruses: Slipping and sliding through transcription and translation

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