Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Jan;8(1):e00622.
doi: 10.1002/mbo3.622. Epub 2018 Apr 10.

Prevalence of fecal viruses and bacteriophage in Canadian farmed mink (Neovison vison)

Xiao-Ting Xie  1 , Andrew M Kropinski  1 , Brian Tapscott  2 , J Scott Weese  1 , Patricia V Turner  1
Affiliations

Prevalence of fecal viruses and bacteriophage in Canadian farmed mink (Neovison vison)

Xiao-Ting Xie et al. Microbiologyopen. 2019 Jan.

Abstract

Recent viral metagenomic studies have demonstrated the diversity of eukaryotic viruses and bacteriophage shed in the feces of domestic species. Although enteric disease is a major concern in the commercial mink farming industry, few etiologic agents have been well characterized. This study aimed to identify viruses shed in the fecal matter of clinically healthy commercial mink from 40 southern Ontario farms. Viral RNA was extracted from 67 pooled fecal samples (30 adult female mink and 37 kit) and amplified for Illumina sequencing on the NextSeq platform, and the resulting contigs were trimmed and assembled using Trimmomatic 0.36.0 and Spades 3.8.0 in iVirus (CyVerse, AZ, USA) and SeqMan NGen 12 (DNAStar, WI, USA). Identification of assembled sequences >100 bp (Geneious 10.1.3) showed an abundance of bacteriophage sequences, mainly from families Siphoviridae (53%), Podoviridae (22%), Myoviridae (20%), Inoviridae (1%), Leviviridae (0.04%), Tectiviridae (0.01%), and Microviridae (0.01%). A diverse range of vertebrate viruses were detected, of which posavirus 3, mink bocavirus, gyroviruses, and avian-associated viruses were most abundant. Additionally, sequences from nonvertebrate viruses with water and soil-associated amebal and algal hosts were also highly prevalent. The results of this study show that viruses shed in the fecal matter of healthy commercial mink are highly diverse and could be closely associated with diet, and that more research is necessary to determine how the detected viruses may impact mink health.

Keywords: antimicrobial resistance; bacteriophage; fecal virome; mink.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogenetic comparison of consensus sequences to related viruses (a) Herpesvirus 2014‐ON consensus (b) Feces‐associated circular virus 2‐14‐ON consensus (c) HCBI8.215‐like virus 2014‐ON consensus (d) Chapparvovirus 2014‐ON consensus (e) Gyrovirus 2014‐ON consensus (f) Parvovirus 2014‐ON consensus (g) Smacovirus 2014‐ON consensus
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Albrecht, J. , Nicholas, J. , Biller, D. , Cameron, K. R. , Biesinger, B. , Newman, C. , … Universitat, F. (1992). Primary structure of the herpesvirus saimiri genome. Journal of Virology, 66(8), 5047–5058. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Arnold, E. , Collier, L. , Balows, A. , & Sussman, M. (1997). Topley and Wilson's microbiology and microbial infections (9th ed.). New York, NY: John Wiley and Sons Inc..
    1. Bodewes, R. , Ruiz‐Gonzalez, A. , Schapendonk, C. M. , van den Brand, J. M. , Osterhaus, A. D. , & Smits, S. L. (2014). Viral metagenomic analysis of feces of wild small carnivores. Virology Journal, 11(1), 89–102. 10.1186/1743-422X-11-89 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Cao, Z. , Zhang, J. , Niu, Y. D. , Cui, N. , Ma, Y. , Cao, F. , … Xu, Y. (2015). Isolation and characterization of a “phiKMV‐Like” bacteriophage and its therapeutic effect on mink hemorrhagic pneumonia. PLoS ONE, 10(1), e0116571 10.1371/journal.pone.0116571 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Chu, D. K. W. , Poon, L. L. M. , Chiu, S. S. S. , Chan, K. H. , Ng, E. M. , Bauer, R. , … Wang, D. (2013). Characterization of a novel gyrovirus in human stool and chicken meat. Journal of Clinical Virology, 55(3), 209–213. - PMC - PubMed

Publication types

Associated data

LinkOut - more resources