• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
virology blog

virology blog

About viruses and viral disease

A human rhinovirus in chimpanzees

1 February 2018 by Vincent Racaniello

rhinovirus receptors
Rhinovirus receptors

An outbreak of respiratory disease in Ugandan chimpanzees provides insight into how virus infection can shape the genome and lead to differences in the cell receptor gene that regulate susceptibility to infection.

Severe respiratory disease was noted in the Kanyawara community of chimpanzees in western Uganda from February to August of 2013. During this outbreak, 55 animals became ill and 5 died. Deep sequence analysis, and subsequently polymerase chain reaction, of swab samples from one of these chimpanzees revealed the presence of human rhinovirus C45. The closest known relative of this virus was previously obtained in 2000 from a human in the United States.

Rhinovirus C45 was not identified in any other of the chimpanzees that fell ill during this outbreak of respiratory disease. Clinical signs observed are consistent with infections by rhinovirus C, but it is also possible that other viruses were involved. Rhinovirus C was previously thought to infect only humans.

Over 160 distinct rhinovirus genotypes are grouped into types A, B, and C. The latter cause about 50% of all human upper respiratory tract infections, and have been associated with influenza-like symptoms and acute asthma exacerbations in children. A single nucleotide polymorphism in the human gene encoding the HRV C receptor, CDHR3 (cadherin-related family member 3, pictured), is associated with severe disease and asthma. Specifically, a tyrosine at amino acid 529 of CDHR3 causes higher cell surface levels, increased virus binding and virus yields. A cysteine at the same position causes lower surface levels, less virus binding and replication, and less risk of disease.

It is thought that rhinovirus C emerged in human populations about 8,000 years ago at a time when human genomes harbored the Y529 allele. Subsequently the C529 protective allele emerged under selective pressure imposed by viral disease. Consistent with this hypothesis, the genomes of Neanderthal and Denisovan humans contain only the Y529 allele.

Genotyping of DNA from 41 chimpanzee fecal samples collected during the outbreak showed that all are homozygous for CHDR3 529Y, as are 24 chimpanzee genomes from the Great Ape Genome Project. This observation is consistent with the absence of widespread HRV C circulation for thousands of years in chimpanzees, which would be expected to select for the protective 529C allele.

HRV C infection in Ugandan chimpanzees was likely introduced by researchers and tourists who frequent the parks. The virus is common among the humans in sub-Saharan Africa. When visiting chimpanzees, humans should wear facemasks and use hand sanitizer to reduce transmission and protect the endangered chimpanzee communities.

Update 2/6/2019: Excellent article on this outbreak with some backstory and comments from the investigators at UW News: link to article.

Filed Under: Basic virology, Information Tagged With: cadherin-related family member 3, CDHR3, chimpanzee, genome, respiratory infection, rhinovirus c, single nucleotide polymorphism, viral, virology, virus, viruses

Primary Sidebar

by Vincent Racaniello

Earth’s virology Professor
Questions? virology@virology.ws

With David Tuller and
Gertrud U. Rey

Follow

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram
Get updates by RSS or Email

Contents

Table of Contents
ME/CFS
Inside a BSL-4
The Wall of Polio
Microbe Art
Interviews With Virologists

Earth’s Virology Course

Virology Live
Columbia U
Virologia en EspaƱol
Virology 101
Influenza 101

Podcasts

This Week in Virology
This Week in Microbiology
This Week in Parasitism
This Week in Evolution
Immune
This Week in Neuroscience
All at MicrobeTV

Useful Resources

Lecturio Online Courses
HealthMap
Polio eradication
Promed-Mail
Small Things Considered
ViralZone
Virus Particle Explorer
The Living River
Parasites Without Borders

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.