Abstract
Wild elephant populations are declining rapidly due to rampant killing for ivory and body parts, range fragmentation, and human-elephant conflict. Wild and captive elephants are further impacted by viruses, including highly pathogenic elephant endotheliotropic herpesviruses. Moreover, while the rich genetic diversity of the ancient elephant lineage is disappearing, elephants, with their low incidence of cancer, have emerged as a surprising resource in human cancer research for understanding the intrinsic cellular response to DNA damage. However, studies on cellular resistance to transformation and herpesvirus reproduction have been severely limited, in part due to the lack of established elephant cell lines to enable in vitro experiments. This report describes creation of a recombinant plasmid, pAelPyV-1-Tag, derived from a wild isolate of African Elephant Polyomavirus (AelPyV-1), that can be used to create immortalized lines of elephant cells. This isolate was extracted from a trunk nodule biopsy isolated from a wild African elephant, Loxodonta africana, in Botswana. The AelPyV-1 genome contains open-reading frames encoding the canonical large (LTag) and small (STag) tumor antigens. We cloned the entire early region spanning the LTag and overlapping STag genes from this isolate into a high-copy vector to construct a recombinant plasmid, pAelPyV-1-Tag, which effectively transformed primary elephant endothelial cells. We expect that the potential of this reagent to transform elephant primary cells will, at a minimum, facilitate study of elephant-specific herpesviruses.
Highlights
More than 175 species and subspecies of the order Proboscidea have inhabited the earth for the last 60 million years [1]
The first set of samples that were screened consisted of DNA extracted from biopsies of trunk nodules collected from seven wild African elephants in Botswana (2013) and Kenya (2011) that had previously tested positive for one or more species of endotheliotropic herpesviruses (EEHVs) and elephant gammaherpesviruses (EGHVs) as part of an independent study [43,44,45] (Fig 1)
The nucleotide sequence segment of the AelPyV-1-Tag gene identified in this wild elephant from Botswana has been deposited into Genbank
Summary
More than 175 species and subspecies of the order Proboscidea have inhabited the earth for the last 60 million years [1]. Three species remain: Loxodonta africana, the African savannah elephant; Loxodonta cyclotis, the African forest elephant; and Elephas maximus, the Asian elephant. All three species are listed in the Appendices of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora (CITES) as either critically endangered or extremely vulnerable [2, 3]. Habitat fragmentation, increasing human-elephant conflict, and poaching for the illicit trade of elephant ivory, skin, and internal organs have decimated, even eliminated, entire populations of wild elephants in all traditional elephant range countries across Asia and Africa [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
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