New Avian Hepadnavirus in Palaeognathous Bird, Germany
RESEARCH LETTERS New Avian Hepadnavirus includes emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae) and ostrich- es (Struthio spp.). in Palaeognathous Bird, In 2015, a deceased adult elegant-crested tinamou Germany kept at Wuppertal Zoo (Wuppertal, Germany) underwent necropsy at the University of Veterinary Medicine Han- 1 1 nover, Foundation (Hannover, Germany). Initial histologic Wendy K. Jo, Vanessa M. Pfankuche, examination revealed moderate, necrotizing hepatitis and Henning Petersen, Samuel Frei, Maya Kummrow, inclusion body–like structures within the hepatocytes. To Stephan Lorenzen, Martin Ludlow, Julia Metzger, identify a putative causative agent, we isolated nucleic ac- Wolfgang Baumgärtner, Albert Osterhaus, ids from the liver and prepared them for sequencing on an Erhard van der Vries Illumina MiSeq system (Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA) Author affiliations: University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, (online Technical Appendix, https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/EID/ Foundation, Hannover, Germany (W.K. Jo, V.M. Pfankuche, article/23/12/16-1634-Techapp1.pdf). We compared ob- H. Petersen, M. Ludlow, J. Metzger, W. Baumgärtner, tained reads with sequences in GenBank using an in-house A. Osterhaus, E. van der Vries); Center for Systems metagenomics pipeline. Approximately 78% of the reads Neuroscience, Hannover (W.K. Jo, V.M. Pfankuche, aligned to existing avihepadnavirus sequences. A full ge- W. Baumgärtner, A. Osterhaus); Wuppertal Zoo, Wuppertal, nome (3,024 bp) of the putative elegant-crested tinamou Germany (S. Frei, M. Kummrow); Bernhard Nocht Institute for HBV (ETHBV) was subsequently constructed by de novo Tropical Medicine, Hamburg (S. Lorenzen); Artemis One Health, assembly mapping >2 million reads (88.6%) to the virus Utrecht, the Netherlands (A. Osterhaus) genome (GenBank accession no.
[Show full text]