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J Wildl Dis 2021 Jan;57(1):1-18

University of British Columbia, School of Population and Public Health, 2206 E Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z3, Canada.

Wild waterbirds are reservoir hosts for avian influenza viruses (AIV), which can cause devastating outbreaks in multiple species, making them a focus for surveillance efforts. Traditional AIV surveillance involves direct sampling of live or dead birds, but environmental substrates present an alternative sample for surveillance. Environmental sampling analyzes AIV excreted by waterbirds into the environment and complements direct bird sampling by minimizing financial, logistic, permitting, and spatial-temporal constraints associated with traditional surveillance. Read More

J Wildl Dis 2021 Jan;57(1):60-70

Department of Science and Technology-National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence for Biomedical Tuberculosis Research, South African Medical Research Council Centre for Tuberculosis Research, Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, PO Box 241, Cape Town 8000, South Africa.

The warthog (Phacochoerus africanus) can be used as a model for investigating disease transmission at the human, wildlife, and livestock interface. An omnivore and scavenger, a warthog moves freely between natural ecotypes, farmland, and human communities and is susceptible to diseases of zoonotic, agricultural, and conservation concern. A retrospective study using 100 individual serum samples collected from May 1999 to August 2016 was performed to determine antibody prevalence to seven pathogens in warthogs from five locations in northeastern South Africa. Read More

Front Immunol 2020 29;11:607333. Epub 2021 Jan 29.

Department of Microbiology and Immunology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, United States.

It is evident that the emergence of infectious diseases, which have the potential for spillover from animal reservoirs, pose an ongoing threat to global health. Zoonotic transmission events have increased in frequency in recent decades due to changes in human behavior, including increased international travel, the wildlife trade, deforestation, and the intensification of farming practices to meet demand for meat consumption. Influenza A viruses (IAV) possess a number of features which make them a pandemic threat and a major concern for human health. Read More

Sci Rep 2021 Feb 25;11(1):4548. Epub 2021 Feb 25.

Division of Biomedical and Life Sciences, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YG, UK.

The addition of a methyl group to the N6-position of adenosine (mA) is considered one of the most prevalent internal post-transcriptional modifications and is attributed to virus replication and cell biology. Viral epitranscriptome sequencing analysis has revealed that hemagglutinin (HA) mRNA of H1N1 carry eight mA sites which are primarily enriched in 5'-DRACH-3' sequence motif. Herein, a large-scale comparative mA analysis was conducted to investigate the conservation patterns of the DRACH motifs that corresponding to the reference mA sites among influenza A viruses. Read More

Cell Microbiol 2021 Feb 24. Epub 2021 Feb 24.

Institute of Virology, Free University Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Influenza A viruses contain two S-acylated proteins, the ion channel M2 and the glycoprotein hemagglutinin (HA). Acylation of the latter is essential for virus replication. Here we analyzed expression of each of the 23 members of the family of ZDHHC acyltransferases in human airway cells, the site of virus replication. Read More