Ancient evolutionary origins of hepatitis E virus in rodentsстатья
Статья опубликована в высокорейтинговом журнале
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Дата последнего поиска статьи во внешних источниках: 26 февраля 2025 г.
Аннотация:Hepatitis E virus (HEV; family Hepeviridae) infections cause >40,000 human deathsannually. Zoonotic infections predominantly originate from ungulates and occasionallyfrom rats, highlighting the zoonotic potential of rodent-associatedhepeviruses.We conducted host genomic data mining and uncovered two genetically divergentrodent-associatedhepeviruses, and two bat-associatedhepeviruses genetically relatedto known bat-associatedstrains. We thus analyzed 2,565 liver specimens from 108 rodentand shrew species sampled from globally understudied regions and hosts in Africa, Asia,and Latin America during 2011-2018for hepeviruses by RT–PCR. We detected 63positive field samples (2.5%, 95% CI 1.9-3.1)from 14 animal species, including twocoinfections with genetically divergent strains and significant variation (X2, P < 0.001)in detection rates between study sites. Strain-specificqRT–PCR assays showed virusconcentrations between 9.2 × 102 and 3.2 × 109 copies/g. We recovered 24 near-completehepeviral genomes from rodents, shrews, and bats, all showing three partially overlappingopen reading frames (ORFs), some including putative late domains that maybe associated with quasi-envelopment.Rodent-derivedhepeviruses grouped into fiveclades clustering in basal sister relationship to human-(31 to 84% distance in translatedORF1-3)and rat-associatedHEV. Parsimony-basedanalyses and cophylogeneticreconciliations revealed that rodents were predominant sources of hepeviral cross-orderhost shifts. Bayesian ancestral state reconstructions substantiated a direct origin ofhuman-associatedHEV in ungulates such as swine and camelids (posterior probability0.8), whereas the nonrecent evolutionary origins of human-andungulate-associatedHEV were projected to rodent hosts (posterior probability > 0.9). Our results elucidatethe genealogy of human HEV and warrant increased surveillance and experimental riskassessments for rodent-associatedhepeviruses.