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TWiV 966: 1918 influenza with Jeffery Taubenberger

23 December 2022 by Vincent Racaniello

Vincent travels to the NIH campus to speak with Jeffery Taubenberger about his career, the 1918 influenza pandemic, deciphering the genome sequence of the virus from tissues of disease victims and using it to rescue infectious virus.

Host: Vincent Racaniello

Guest: Jeffery Taubenberger

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Filed Under: This Week in Virology Tagged With: 1918 influenza, influenza, pandemic, Spanish flu, vaccine, viral, virology, virus, viruses, zoonosis

TWiV Special: Monkeypox clinical update with Dr. Daniel Griffin

27 May 2022 by Vincent Racaniello

In this special episode, Dr. Griffin answers questions about the recent cases of monkeypox including their origin, clinical presentation, diagnosis, treatment, and overall risk.

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Filed Under: This Week in Virology Tagged With: monkeypox, smallpox, vaccine, viral, virology, virus, viruses, zoonosis

TWiV 896: Memory B cells, the way we were

1 May 2022 by Vincent Racaniello

TWiV explains a study of how climate change is predicted to increase cross-species viral transmission risk, and increased memory B cell potency and breadth after a SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccine boost.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Amy Rosenfeld

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Filed Under: This Week in Virology Tagged With: antibody, climate change, COVID-19, memory B cell, pandemic, SARS-CoV-2, variant of concern, viral, virology, virus, viruses, zoonosis

TWiV 891: LLOV in the time of Ebola

21 April 2022 by Vincent Racaniello

Elke, Adam, and Gabor join TWiV to discuss their work on Lloviu virus, a filovirus, including recovery of infectious virus from a DNA copy of the genome and from Schreiber’s bats in Hungary.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Rich Condit, Kathy Spindler, and Brianne Barker

Guests: Elke Muhlberger, Adam Hume, and Gabor Kemenesi

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Filed Under: This Week in Virology Tagged With: ebola virus, filovirus, host range, Lloviu virus, Schreiber's bats, spillover, viral, virology, virus, viruses, zoonosis

TWiV 875: Animal house

13 March 2022 by Vincent Racaniello

TWiV discusses the virome of game animals in China, and the finding that binding of sarbecoviruses to ACE2 is an ancestral and evolvable trait.

Hosts: Vincent Racaniello, Dickson Despommier, and Amy Rosenfeld

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Filed Under: This Week in Virology Tagged With: ACE2, coronavirus, COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, spike, spillover, viral, virology, virus, viruses, zoonosis

The remarkable diversity of bat coronaviruses

17 June 2021 by Vincent Racaniello

All human viruses, including SARS-CoV-2, arose from spillovers from other animals. Results of a recent study of bat samples collected in a small region of Yunnan Province, China revealed additional close relatives of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV.

After the identification of SARS-CoV-2 in early 2020, wildlife sampling and retrospective genome sequencing revealed highly related viruses in animals. The virus RaTG13, from Rhinolophus affinis, shares the highest overall genome identity with SARS-CoV-2, 96.10%. The virus RmYN02 from the bat R. malayanus is the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 in the ORF1ab open reading frame. Pangolin viruses from Guangdong have identical amino acids at six key residues in the receptor binding domain (RBD) needed for binding to human ACE2. A more distantly related coronavirus was isolated from a bat in Japan, and two viruses from Cambodia have 92.6% genome identity with SARS-CoV-2 and share five of six critical amino acids in the RBD. Finally a bat coronavirus from Thailand is closely related to RmYN02. These observations demonstrate that bats from a broad part of Asia harbor close relatives of SARS-CoV-2.

Fecal samples, oral swabs, and urine samples collected from mainly horseshoe bats in a small area of Yunnan Province between May 2019 – November 2020 were analyzed by RNA sequencing. The results revealed 9 novel betacoronaviruses and 17 alphacoronaviruses. Four of the betacoronaviruses were related to SARS-CoV-2 and three were related to SARS-CoV. Rhinolophus pusillus virus RpYN06 was the closest relative of SARS-CoV-2 in most of the genome with the exception of the spike gene. The other three SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses encode a spike gene that could weakly bind to the hACE2 receptor in vitro. Patches of high sequence identity in different regions of the genome illustrate the work of extensive recombination events.

While all the viruses identified in this study, as well as the previously discovered RmYN01 and RmYN02, were identified in a 1100 hectare part of Yunnan province, the results of ecological modeling show that many species of rhinolophid bats are present in much of Southeast Asia and southern China. Numerous other bat species and other wildlife inhabit this area, many of which can be infected by SARS-CoV-2. Hence much more wildlife sampling is needed to track potential spillovers of viruses into humans.

These findings also demonstrate that a very large part of Asia might harbor the direct ancestor of SARS-CoV-2. Remember that HIV/AIDS was first detected in Los Angeles in 1981 but the virus spilled over from a chimpanzee to a human in Africa in ~1920.

Filed Under: Basic virology, Information Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, Rhinolophus bat, SARS-CoV-2, viral, virology, virus, viruses, wildlife sampling, zoonosis

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by Vincent Racaniello

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