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Identification of Novel Cetacean Poxviruses in Cetaceans Stranded in South West England

Barnett, J; Dastjerdi, A; Davison, N; Deaville, R; Everest, D; Peake, J; Finnegan, C; ... Steinbach, F; + view all (2015) Identification of Novel Cetacean Poxviruses in Cetaceans Stranded in South West England. PLOS ONE , 10 (6) , Article e0124315. 10.1371/journal.pone.0124315. Green open access

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Abstract

Poxvirus infections in marine mammals have been mainly reported through their clinical lesions and electron microscopy (EM). Poxvirus particles in association with such lesions have been demonstrated by EM and were previously classified as two new viruses, cetacean poxvirus 1 (CePV-1) and cetacean poxvirus 2 (CePV-2). In this study, epidermal pox lesions in cetaceans stranded in South West England (Cornwall) between 2008 and 2012 were investigated by electron microscopy and molecular analysis. PCR and sequencing of a highly conserved region within the viral DNA polymerase gene ruled out both parapoxand orthopoxviruses. Moreover, phylogenetic analysis of the PCR product clustered the sequences with those previously described as cetacean poxviruses. However, taking the close genetic distance of this gene fragment across the family of poxviridae into account, it is reasonable to postulate further, novel cetacean poxvirus species. The nucleotide similarity within each cluster (tentative species) detected ranged from 98.6% to 100%, whilst the similarity between the clusters was no more than 95%. The detection of several species of poxvirus in different cetacean species confirms the likelihood of a heterogeneous cetacean poxvirus genus, comparable to the heterogeneity observed in other poxvirus genera.

Type: Article
Title: Identification of Novel Cetacean Poxviruses in Cetaceans Stranded in South West England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0124315
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0124315
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright: © 2015 Barnett et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1502339
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