International Medical University, Bukit Jalil, Malaysia.
University of Tunku Abdul Rahman, Sungai Long, Malaysia.
Intervirology. 2018;61(2):92-95. doi: 10.1159/000491602. Epub 2018 Aug 17.
The giant amoebal viruses of Mimivirus and Marseillevirus are large DNA viruses and have been documented in water, soil, and sewage samples. The trend of discovering these giant amoebal viruses has been increasing throughout Asia with Japan, India, and Saudi Arabia being the latest countries to document the presence of these viruses. To date, there have been no reports of large amoebal viruses being isolated in South East Asia.
In this study, we aim to discover these viruses from soil samples in an aboriginal village (Serendah village) in Peninsular -Malaysia.
We successfully detected and isolated both Mimivirus-like and Marseillevirus-like viruses using Acanthamoeba castellanii. Phylogeny analysis identified them as Mimivirus and Marseillevirus, respectively.
The ubiquitous nature of both Mimivirus and Marseillevirus is further confirmed in our study as they are detected in higher quantity in soil that is near to water vicinities in an aboriginal village in Peninsular Malaysia. However, this study is limited by our inability to investigate the impact of Mimivirus and Marseillevirus on the aboriginal villagers. More studies on the potential impact of these viruses on human health, especially on the aborigines, are warranted.
巨型阿米巴病毒，如 Mimivirus 和 Marseillevirus，是大型 DNA 病毒，已在水、土壤和污水样本中被记录。在亚洲，发现这些巨型阿米巴病毒的趋势一直在增加，日本、印度和沙特阿拉伯是最新记录到这些病毒存在的国家。迄今为止，尚未有关于在东南亚分离出大型阿米巴病毒的报道。
本研究旨在从马来西亚半岛的一个原住民村庄（Serendah 村）的土壤样本中发现这些病毒。
我们使用 Acanthamoeba castellanii 成功地检测和分离出类 Mimivirus 和类 Marseillevirus 病毒。系统发育分析将它们分别鉴定为 Mimivirus 和 Marseillevirus。
本研究进一步证实了 Mimivirus 和 Marseillevirus 的普遍存在性，因为它们在马来西亚半岛原住民村庄靠近水域的土壤中以更高的数量被检测到。然而，本研究受到限制，我们无法调查 Mimivirus 和 Marseillevirus 对原住民村民的影响。需要更多的研究来探讨这些病毒对人类健康的潜在影响，特别是对原住民的影响。
