Title
Screening great ape museum specimens for DNA viruses
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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.
Keywords
MuseomicsGreat apesTarget-enrichment captureVirusesHepatitis B virus
Object type
Language
English [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2111159
Appeared in
Title
Scientific Reports
Volume
14
ISSN
2045-2322
Issued
2024
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date issued
2024
Access rights
Rights statement
© The Author(s) 2024
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