Arctic and Arctic-like rabies viruses: distribution, phylogeny and evolutionary history ...

• Main Authors: Kuzmin, I. V., Hughes, G. J., Botvinkin, A. D., Gribencha, S. G., Rupprecht, C. E.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Zenodo 2008
• Subjects: Animals; Animals, Wild/virology; Arctic Regions/epidemiology; Disease Reservoirs; Disease Transmission, Infectious; Geography; Humans; Molecular Epidemiology; Phylogeny; RNA/analysis; Rabies virus/*classification/genetics/isolation & purification; Rabies/*epidemiology/transmission/*virology; Biodiversity; Mammalia; Chiroptera; Chordata; Animalia; bats; bat; Arctic; Alaska; Siberia
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13527131; https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.13527131

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) Forty-one newly sequenced isolates of Arctic and Arctic-like rabies viruses, were genetically compared to each other and to those available from GenBank. Four phylogenetic lineages of Arctic viruses were identified. Arctic-1 viruses circulate in Ontario, Arctic-2 viruses circulate in Siberia and Alaska, Arctic-3 viruses circulate circumpolarly, and a newly described lineage Arctic-4 circulates locally in Alaska. The oldest available isolates from Siberia (between 1950 and 1960) belong to the Arctic-2 and Arctic-3 lineages and share 98.6-99.2% N gene identity with contemporary viruses. Two lineages of Arctic-like viruses were identified in southern Asia and the Middle East (Arctic-like-1) and eastern Asia (Arctic-like-2). A time-scaled tree demonstrates that the time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of Arctic and Arctic-like viruses is dated between 1255 and 1786. Evolution of the Arctic viruses has occurred through a northerly spread. The ...