Abstract
BackgroundPolyomaviruses infect a wide variety of mammalian and avian hosts with a broad spectrum of outcomes including asymptomatic infection, acute systemic disease, and tumor induction.MethodsViral metagenomics and general PCR methods were used to detected viral nucleic acid in the samples from a diseased and healthy giant pandas.ResultsA novel polyomavirus, the giant panda polyomavirus 1 (GPPyV1) from the nasal cavity of a dead giant panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) was characterized. The GPPyV1 genome is 5144 bp in size and reveals five putative open-reading frames coding for the classic small and large T antigens in the early region, and the VP1, VP2 and VP3 capsid proteins in the late region. Phylogenetic analyses of the large T antigen of the GPPyV1 indicated GPPyV1 belonged to a putative new species within genus Deltapolyomavirus, clustering with four human polyomavirus species. The GPPyV1 VP1 and VP2 clustered with genus Alphapolyomavirus. Our epidemiologic study indicated that this novel polyomavirus was also detected in nasal swabs and fecal samples collected from captive healthy giant pandas.ConclusionA novel polyomavirus was detected in giant pandas and its complete genome was characterized, which may cause latency infection in giant pandas.
Highlights
Polyomaviruses infect a wide variety of mammalian and avian hosts with a broad spectrum of outcomes including asymptomatic infection, acute systemic disease, and tumor induction
polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening of all the samples from the dead wild giant panda, plus 30 other nasal swab samples and 200 fecal samples collected from healthy captive giant pandas in the the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China with a set of nested primers designed on the VP1 sequence
Results indicated that one nasal swab and two fecal samples from healthy captive giant pandas and only the nasal swab from the dead animal were positive, which suggests that polyomavirus may establish latency infection in the gastrointestinal tract and nasal cavity of giant pandas
Summary
Polyomaviruses infect a wide variety of mammalian and avian hosts with a broad spectrum of outcomes including asymptomatic infection, acute systemic disease, and tumor induction. And late genes are transcribed bidirectionally, starting from a short non-coding regulatory region. Genes encode two or three proteins, designated tumor antigens, which participate in viral genome replication and cellular transformation. The late genes encode the major and minor capsid proteins VP1, VP2, and VP3 [1]. Many mammalian polyomaviruses cause subclinical infections with life-long persistence in their immune competent hosts [4]. Some of the polyomaviruses have been described to cause disease in immune-compromised hosts [5]. Polyomaviruses are widely distributed among mammalian and avian species and besides humans they have been identified in monkeys, cattle, rabbits, raccoons, rodents, bats, elephants, badgers, and a wide variety of birds [13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24]
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