Screening great ape museum specimens for DNA viruses.
More On Article
- HEAS Members Publish GENOVIS: a Python package for the visualization of population genetic analyses
- GENOVIS: a Python package for the visualization of population genetic analyses
- Dealing With Inbuilt Age: A Bayesian Approach to Radiocarbon Dating of Rice, Bamboo and Charcoal From Non Ban Jak, Thailand.
- Wind(ow) of change: The end of the Middle Stone Age and the beginning of the Later Stone Age at Umhlatuzana rockshelter showcasing concurrent technological and techno-economic shifts.
- Annual HEAS Gräzlfest takes place at the Natural History Museum Vienna.
Hämmerle, M., Guellil, M., Trgovec-Greif, L., Cheronet, O., Sawyer, S., Ruiz-Gartzia, I., Lizano, E., Rymbekova, A., Gelabert, P., Bernardi, P., Han, S., Rattei, T., Schuenemann, V.J., Marques-Bonet, T., Guschanski, K., Calvignac-Spencer, S., Pinhasi, R., Kuhlwilm, M., 2024. Screening great ape museum specimens for DNA viruses. Scientific Reports 14, 29806.
Abstract
Natural history museum collections harbour a record of wild species from the past centuries, providing a unique opportunity to study animals as well as their infectious agents. Thousands of great ape specimens are kept in these collections, and could become an important resource for studying the evolution of DNA viruses. Their genetic material is likely to be preserved in dry museum specimens, as reported previously for monkeypox virus genomes from historical orangutan specimens. Here, we screened 209 great ape museum specimens for 99 different DNA viruses, using hybridization capture coupled with short-read high-throughput sequencing. We determined the presence of multiple viruses within this dataset from historical specimens and obtained several near-complete viral genomes. In particular, we report high-coverage (> 18-fold) hepatitis B virus genomes from one gorilla and two chimpanzee individuals, which are phylogenetically placed within clades infecting the respective host species.