BOB体育

GAINESVILLE, Fla. 鈥� On a warm May day, an all-black domestic shorthair cat named Pepper entered his Gainesville, Florida, home and dropped a dead mouse on the carpet at his owner鈥檚 feet.

There wasn鈥檛 anything particularly unusual about Pepper鈥檚 behavior; he鈥檚 a skilled hunter who regularly leaves 鈥済ifts鈥� for his humans. But Pepper鈥檚 owner had a different response than most of us. He鈥檚 an expert in viruses and their transmission, including across species. Suspecting that mice may carry mule deerpox, Lednicky scooped up Pepper鈥檚 trophy and took it to his University of Florida lab for testing.

There, Lednicky and his team discovered that the rodent, a common cotton mouse, did not carry deerpox virus, but it did harbor a jeilongvirus, previously found in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. It comes from a family of viruses that infect mammals, reptiles, birds, and fish, and can occasionally cause serious illness in humans.

And this wasn鈥檛 just any jeilongvirus. It鈥檚 genetically much different from other jeilongviruses, Lednicky said.

鈥淚t grows equally well in rodent, human, and nonhuman primate (monkey) cells, making it a great candidate for a spillover event,鈥� said Lednicky, a research professor in the and a member of . A spillover event is when a virus moves from one species to another.

The virus, named Gainesville rodent jeilong virus 1 by the team, is the first jeilongvirus to be discovered in the U.S.

鈥淲e were not anticipating a virus of this sort, and the discovery reflects the realization that many viruses that we don鈥檛 know about circulate in animals that live in close proximity to humans. And indeed, were we to look, many more would be discovered,鈥� said Emily DeRuyter, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Environmental and Global Health who specializes in . She is also a Lednicky mentee and first author of the describing the virus鈥檚 discovery that appears in the journal Pathogens.

Jeilongviruses are not yet well understood, but they are a type of paramyxovirus, which are associated with respiratory infections. While the finding that Gainesville rodent jeilong virus 1 can infect many different species is troubling, DeRuyter said, there is no need to panic. Most humans have little direct contact with jeilongviruses鈥� main host, wild rats and mice. Take for example, hantavirus, another virus found in wild rodents.

鈥淗umans can develop severe to fatal illness if they get infected by hantaviruses, but so far, those types of infections remain rare and typically occur only among people who come into contact with rodent waste, often through airborne exposure to rodent urine or fecal material,鈥� DeRuyter said.

The UF team was able to grow the jeilongvirus in the lab, allowing them to continue to examine the virus鈥檚 traits, said Lednicky, the study鈥檚 senior author.

鈥淚deally, animal studies would be done to determine whether the virus causes illness in rodents and other small animals,鈥� he said. 鈥淓ventually, we need to determine if it has affected humans in Gainesville and the rest of Florida.鈥�

Surveillance initiatives that identify emerging or re-emerging viral pathogens circulating within the environment or in wildlife or individuals who are high risk are also important, DeRuyter said.

鈥淭his helps to set up infrastructure to evaluate the risk of novel pathogens or determine if the virus phenotypes are shifting to become more dangerous to their hosts,鈥� DeRuyter said.

As for Pepper, he developed no symptoms from his exposure to the virus-carrying mouse.

鈥淐ats, in general, evolved to eat rodents, and are not sickened by the viruses carried by rodents,鈥� Lednicky said, 鈥渂ut we have to do tests to see whether the virus affects pets, and humans.鈥�