The History of Avian Medicine in the United States V. Insights into Avian Tumor Virus Research

The Extraordinary Evolutionary History of the Reticuloendotheliosis Viruses

“…This clade is robustly supported in bootstrapped phylogenies, and the presence of unique, shared indels in LTRs provides further evidence of common ancestry (Figure S2). These observations establish that HA9901 shares a common history with pREVA6, which can ultimately be traced back to the prototypic REV specimen [2],[41]. Interestingly, HA9901 has acquired numerous nonsynonymous mutations, consistent with ongoing replication as an exogenous retrovirus (Figure 4b).…”

“…The creation of Mareks disease vaccines became a priority in the United States during the 1950s, in response to devastating outbreaks of an apparently new, acute form of the disease [41]. However, effective vaccines were not produced until after the first avian cell culture systems were established in the 1960s.…”