Coradduzza Elisabetta, Sanna Daria, Rocchigiani Angela M, Pintus Davide, Scarpa Fabio, Scivoli Rosario, Bechere Roberto, Dettori Maria A, Montesu Maria A, Marras Vincenzo, Lobrano Renato, Ligios Ciriaco, Puggioni Giantonella
Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Sardegna, 07100 Sassari, Italy.
Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, Università di Sassari, 07100 Sassari, Italy.
Life (Basel). 2021 May 4;11(5):416. doi: 10.3390/life11050416.
Orf virus (ORFV) represents the causative agent of contagious ecthyma, clinically characterized by mild papular and pustular to severe proliferative lesions, mainly occurring in sheep and goats. In order to provide hints on the evolutionary history of this virus, we carried out a study aimed to assess the genetic variation of ORFV in Sardinia that hosts a large affected small ruminant population. We also found a high worldwide mutational viral evolutionary rate, which resulted, in turn, higher than the rate we detected for the strains isolated in Sardinia. In addition, a well-supported genetic divergence was found between the viral strains isolated from sheep and those from goats, but no relevant connection was evidenced between the severity of lesions produced by ORFV and specific polymorphic patterns in the two species of hosts. Such a finding suggests that ORFV infection-related lesions are not necessarily linked to the expression of one of the three genes here analyzed and could rather be the effect of the expression of other genes or rather represents a multifactorial character.
羊口疮病毒(ORFV)是传染性脓疱性皮炎的病原体,临床上以轻度丘疹和脓疱至严重增生性病变为特征,主要发生于绵羊和山羊。为了探究该病毒的进化史,我们开展了一项研究,旨在评估撒丁岛(当地有大量小反刍动物感染)的ORFV基因变异情况。我们还发现,该病毒在全球范围内具有较高的突变进化速率,且这一速率高于我们在撒丁岛分离出的毒株的进化速率。此外,我们发现从绵羊和山羊中分离出的病毒株之间存在明显的遗传差异,但未发现ORFV在两种宿主中产生的病变严重程度与特定多态性模式之间存在显著关联。这一发现表明,与ORFV感染相关的病变不一定与这里分析的三个基因之一的表达有关,而可能是其他基因表达的结果,或者更确切地说,是一个多因素特征。