Department of Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Vienna, Djerassiplatz 1, 1030, Vienna, Austria.
Human Evolution and Archaeological Sciences (HEAS), University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 30;14(1):29806. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-80780-w.
Natural history museum collections harbour a record of wild species from the past centuries, providing a unique opportunity to study animals as well as their infectious agents. Thousands of great ape specimens are kept in these collections, and could become an important resource for studying the evolution of DNA viruses. Their genetic material is likely to be preserved in dry museum specimens, as reported previously for monkeypox virus genomes from historical orangutan specimens. Here, we screened 209 great ape museum specimens for 99 different DNA viruses, using hybridization capture coupled with short-read high-throughput sequencing. We determined the presence of multiple viruses within this dataset from historical specimens and obtained several near-complete viral genomes. In particular, we report high-coverage (> 18-fold) hepatitis B virus genomes from one gorilla and two chimpanzee individuals, which are phylogenetically placed within clades infecting the respective host species.
自然历史博物馆的馆藏记录了过去几个世纪的野生动物，为研究动物及其病原体提供了独特的机会。数千件大型类人猿标本被保存在这些馆藏中，它们可能成为研究 DNA 病毒进化的重要资源。正如之前从历史上的猩猩标本中检测到猴痘病毒基因组所报道的那样，它们的遗传物质很可能保存在干燥的博物馆标本中。在这里，我们使用杂交捕获结合短读高通量测序技术，对 209 个大型类人猿博物馆标本进行了 99 种不同 DNA 病毒的筛查。我们从历史标本中确定了该数据集内的多种病毒的存在，并获得了几个近乎完整的病毒基因组。特别是，我们报告了一个大猩猩和两个黑猩猩个体的高覆盖率（> 18 倍）乙型肝炎病毒基因组，它们在系统发育上位于感染各自宿主物种的分支内。
