This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All sequences are available from GenBank database ( ) under the accession numbers 5921116 through 5921133.įunding: The work was supported by the Academy of Finland (, 251836 “Arboviruses in Northern Europe” to OV), HUS-EVO (, TYH2011305 to OV), Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation (, to JH), and the Finnish Foundation for Veterinary Research (, 20 grant rounds to UH). Received: JAccepted: JanuPublished: January 23, 2017Ĭopyright: © 2017 Keller et al. Kuhn, Division of Clinical Research, UNITED STATES (2017) Co-infecting Reptarenaviruses Can Be Vertically Transmitted in Boa Constrictor. Our findings further suggest that vertical transmission can, and likely has, significantly influence(d) the evolution of reptarenaviruses, since co-infection will allow reassortment of the viral genomes.Ĭitation: Keller S, Hetzel U, Sironen T, Korzyukov Y, Vapalahti O, Kipar A, et al. However, we could confirm the development of BIBD in offspring from an age of 2 months. While the parental animals had BIBD, we did not find evidence of the intracytoplasmic inclusions characteristic to BIBD in the infected embryos and perinatal abortions. We herein report that reptarenaviruses, and remarkably a whole set of co-infecting reptarenavirus species (based on the nucleotide difference in the L segment), can be transmitted vertically i.e. The above renders reptarenaviruses rather unique and a model for studying viral co-infection. Recently, we and others observed that snakes with BIBD commonly harbour several S and L segments (arenaviruses have a bisegmented genome), which we refer to as co-infection. Members of the genus Reptarenavirus are “newcomers” of the family Arenaviridae and have been associated with boid inclusion body disease (BIBD), an economically important, fatal disease of captive boid snakes. In addition to demonstrating vertical transmission of multiple species, our results also indicate that reptarenavirus infection induces BIBD over time in the offspring. In the tissues of embryos and perinatal abortions, viral antigen was sometimes detected, but IB were consistently seen only in the juvenile snakes from the age of 2 mo onwards. We extended our findings by an in vitro approach cell cultures derived from embryonal samples rapidly developed IB and promoted replication of some or all parental viruses. Curiously, not all offspring obtained the full parental “reptarenavirome”. We further confirmed vertical transmission of the co-infecting reptarenaviruses by species-specific RT-PCR from samples of parental animals and offspring. By applying next-generation sequencing and de novo sequence assembly we determined the “reptarenavirome” of each clutch, yielding several nearly complete L and S segments of multiple reptarenaviruses. The mother and/or father of each clutch were initially diagnosed with BIBD and/or reptarenavirus infection by detection of the pathognomonic inclusion bodies (IB) and/or reptarenaviral RNA. constrictor clutches with offspring ranging in age from embryos over perinatal abortions to juveniles. Herein we provide strong evidence that co-infecting reptarenavirus species can be vertically transmitted in Boa constrictor. Thus far BIBD has only been reported in captive snakes, and neither the incubation period nor the route of transmission are known. BIBD has been associated with infection, and more recently with coinfection, by various reptarenavirus species (family Arenaviridae). Boid inclusion body disease (BIBD) is an often fatal disease affecting mainly constrictor snakes.
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