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Comparison of Viromes in Ticks from Different Domestic Animals in China

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Virologica Sinica

Abstract

Ticks are involved in the transmission of various arboviruses and some tick-borne viruses pose significant threats to the health of humans or livestock. This study aimed to investigate the geographical distribution of tick species and tick-associated viruses in central and eastern China. Total 573 ticks from domestic animals including dogs, sheep and cattle were collected in 2017. Two genera of ticks were identified including Rhipicephalus and Haemaphysalis. Sequencing was performed on Miseq Illumina platform to characterize the tick viromes from the four different sampling locations. Following trimming, 13,640 reads were obtained and annotated to 19 virus families. From these sequences, above 37.74% of the viral reads were related to the RNA viruses. Virome comparison study revealed that the tick viral diversity was considerably different in the two identified tick genera. The viral diversity of R. microplus was significantly different from that of other Rhipicephalus species. On the other hand, substantial overlap in viral species was observed between the same genera. In addition, we found no evidence that the natural host played a major role in shaping virus diversity based on the comparison of their viromes. Rather, the geographic location seems to significantly influence the viral families. Phylogenetic study indicated that the novel negative-sense RNA viruses identified in this study was closely related to Bole tick virus 1 and 3 viruses. In conclusion, the present study provides a baseline for comparing viruses detected in ticks, according to species, natural hosts, and geographic locations.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1200202) and the Shanghai Pudong New Area Science and Technology Development Fund (Grant No. PKJ2018-N02).

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Author notes

  1. Tingting Zhao and Haiyan Gong these authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Veterinary Biotechnology, School of Agriculture and Biology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China

    Tingting Zhao, Xiaojuan Shen, Seong Jin Wang & Li Cui

  2. Shanghai Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Haiyan Gong & Tongling Shan

  3. Shanghai Pudong New District Center for Animal Diseases Control and Prevention, Shanghai, 201299, China

    Xiangqian Yu

  4. School of Medicine, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, 2012013, China

    Wen Zhang

Authors
  1. Tingting Zhao
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  2. Haiyan Gong
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  3. Xiaojuan Shen
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  4. Wen Zhang
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  5. Tongling Shan
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  6. Xiangqian Yu
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  7. Seong Jin Wang
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  8. Li Cui
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Contributions

HG and LC designed the experiments. TZ, XS, TS, XY, and SW carried out the experiments. TZ and WZ analyzed the data. XS and TZ wrote the paper. TZ and LC checked and finalized the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Li Cui.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Animal and Human Rights Statement

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

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Zhao, T., Gong, H., Shen, X. et al. Comparison of Viromes in Ticks from Different Domestic Animals in China. Virol. Sin. 35, 398–406 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-020-00197-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12250-020-00197-3

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