Fatal monkeypox in wild-living sooty mangabey, Côte d'Ivoire, 2012

Abstract

We isolated a monkeypox virus from a wild-living monkey, a sooty mangabey, found dead in Taï National Park, Côte d'Ivoire, in March 2012. The whole-genome sequence obtained from this isolate and directly from clinical specimens showed its close relationship to monkeypox viruses from Western Africa.

Keywords: Côte d’Ivoire; Poxvirus; Taï National Park; monkeypox virus; viruses; zoonoses.

Figure 1

Phylogenetic position of the MPXV-TNP isolate (framed in green) from a wild-living sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys), March 2012, within the West African clade. MPXV-TNP is closely related to the strain isolated from a human in Liberia in 1970. Calculated with MrBayes (with gaps) as binary model (http://mrbayes.csit.fsu.edu). MPXV, monkeypox virus; TNP, Taï National Park (Côte d’Ivoire). Scale bar indicates nucleotide substitutions per site.

Figure 2

Heat map of MPXV proteins with rather low conservation. Shown is the comparison of protein length and identity. The degree of protein truncation is represented as a black bar. The differences in protein identity of the remainder of the proteins are represented by color gradation ranging from green (100% protein identity) to brown (≈50% protein identity) to red (0% protein identity). Only proteins with protein length or identity <95% are shown. Protein names are based on MPXV-Sankuru-Zaire-1996. MPXV, monkeypox virus.