Novel hepacivirus in Asian house shrew,China

<正>Dear Editor,Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a leading global cause of various liver diseases, including chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma. The genome of HCV is monopartite, single-stranded, positive RNA, about 10 kb in size.HCV is the prototype species of the Hepacivirus genus,which contains 14 species according to the update from the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (Smith et al., 2016). Prior to 2005, humans were thought to be the only     

Viral metagenomics analysis of planktonic viruses in East Lake, Wuhan, China

East Lake (Lake Donghu), located in Wuhan, China, is a typical city freshwater lake that has been experiencing eutrophic conditions and algal blooming during recent years. Marine and fresh water are considered to contain a large number of viruses. However, little is known about their genetic diversity because of the limited techniques for culturing viruses. In this study, we conducted a viral metagenomic analysis using a high-throughput sequencing technique with samples collected from East Lake in Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The libraries from four samples each generated 234,669, 71,837, 12,820, and 34,236 contigs (> 90 bp each), respectively. The genetic structure of the viral community revealed a high genetic diversity covering 23 viral families, with the majority of contigs homologous to DNA viruses, including members of Myoviridae, Podoviridae, Siphoviridae, Phycodnaviridae, and Microviridae, which infect bacteria or algae, and members of Circoviridae, which infect invertebrates and vertebrates. The highest viral genetic diversity occurred in samples collected in August, then December and June, and the least diversity in March. Most contigs have low-sequence identities with known viruses. PCR detection targeting the conserved sequences of genes (g20, psbA, psbD, and DNApol) of cyanophages further confirmed that there are novel cyanophages in the East Lake. Our viral metagenomic data provide the first preliminary understanding of the virome in one freshwater lake in China and would be helpful for novel virus discovery and the control of algal blooming in the future.     

细胞自噬和人类疱疹病毒相互作用的研究进展

自噬是普遍存在于真核生物中的自我保护机制之一,在自噬相关蛋白的参与下形成了完整而复杂的吞噬和自身调节机制,使其防御过程有条不紊地进行。除维持细胞内成分更新外,自噬还可选择性识别并清除入侵的病原微生物,如人类疱疹病毒。人类疱疹病毒在全球范围内普遍存在,感染人群广泛。然而,在与宿主长期共存的过程中,人疱疹病毒已经进化出相当强的抗细胞自噬机制来破坏、阻滞宿主的这一清除作用。     

Study of the dynamics of Microcystis aeruginosa and its cyanophage in East Lake using quantitative PCR

Dear Editor, East Lake,located in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River,is a major source of drinking water for local residents.However,the large increase of population density and the rapid development of industry has resulted in heavy eutrophication of East Lake over the past few decades.Microcystis aeruginosa is a well-known toxic algae-blooming cyanobacterial species (Carmichael W W,et al.,2001) and a major player in the cyanobacterial water blooming in East Lake.     

Metagenomic analysis of viruses from bat fecal samples reveals many novel viruses in insectivorous bats in China

Increasing data indicate that bats harbor diverse viruses, some of which cause severe human diseases. In this study, sequence-independent amplification and high-throughput sequencing (Solexa) were applied to the metagenomic analysis of viruses in bat fecal samples collected from 6 locations in China. A total of 8,746,417 reads with a length of 306,124,595 bp were obtained. Among these reads, 13,541 (0.15%) had similarity to phage sequences and 9,170 (0.1%) had similarity to eukaryotic virus sequences. A total of 129 assembled contigs (>100 nucleotides) were constructed and compared with GenBank: 32 contigs were related to phages, and 97 were related to eukaryotic viruses. The most frequent reads and contigs related to eukaryotic viruses were homologous to densoviruses, dicistroviruses, coronaviruses, parvoviruses, and tobamoviruses, a range that includes viruses from invertebrates, vertebrates, and plants. Most of the contigs had low identities to known viral genomic or protein sequences, suggesting that a large number of novel and genetically diverse insect viruses as well as putative mammalian viruses are transmitted by bats in China. This study provides the first preliminary understanding of the virome of some bat populations in China, which may guide the discovery and isolation of novel viruses in the future.