Novel phlebovirus with zoonotic potential isolated from ticks, Australia

Abstract

Recently discovered tick-borne phleboviruses have been associated with severe disease and death among persons in Asia and the United States. We report the discovery of a novel tick phlebovirus in Tasmania State, Australia, that is closely related to those zoonotic viruses found in Asia and North America.

Keywords: Australia; Heartland virus; bunyavirus; phlebovirus; severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome virus; shy albatross; tick; viruses; zoonoses.

Figure 1

Electron microscopic examination results of a newly isolated virus, tentatively named Hunter Island Group virus, isolated from ticks collected from shy albatrosses, Tasmania, Australia. A) Negative-contrast staining of virions. B) Thin section of infected Vero cells showing the presence of viral particles. Original magnification ×100,000; scale bars represent 100 nm,

Figure 2

Phylogenetic trees of recently isolated bunyaviruses based on amino acid sequences of the polymerase protein (A) encoded by the large segment, the membrane glycoprotein polyprotein (B) encoded by the medium segment, and the nucleocapsid protein (C) and the nonstructural protein (D) encoded by the small segment of selected bunyaviruses. Maximum-likelihood trees were constructed by using MEGA5 (http://www.megasoftware.net/) with bootstrapping at 1,000 replicates. GenBank accession numbers are within parentheses next to the virus names. Scale bars indicate nucleotide substitutions per site.