Summary African horse sickness was confirmed in horses in Thailand during March 2020. The virus was determined to belong to serotype 1 and is phylogenetically closely related to isolates from South Africa. This is the first incidence of African horse sickness occurring in South East Asia and of serotype 1 outside of Africa.

Lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) is an emerging poxviral pathogen of cattle that is currently spreading throughout Asia. The disease situation is of high importance for farmers and policy makers in Asia. In October 2020, feral cattle in Hong Kong developed multi‐focal cutaneous nodules consistent with lumpy skin disease (LSD). Gross and histological pathology further supported the diagnosis and samples were sent to the OIE Reference Laboratory at The Pirbright Institute for confirmatory testing. LSDV was detected using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and additional molecular analyses. This is the first report of LSD in Hong Kong. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) of the strain LSDV/Hong Kong/2020 and phylogenetic analysis were carried out in order to identify connections to previous outbreaks of LSD, and better understand the drivers of LSDV emergence. Analysis of the 90 core poxvirus genes revealed LSDV/Hong Kong/2020 was a novel strain most closely related to the live‐attenuated Neethling vaccine strains of LSDV and more distantly related to wildtype LSDV isolates from Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Analysis of the more variable regions located towards the termini of the poxvirus genome revealed genes in LSDV/Hong Kong/2020 with different patterns of grouping when compared to previously published wildtype and vaccine strains of LSDV. This work reveals that the LSD outbreak in Hong Kong in 2020 was caused by a different strain of LSDV than the LSD epidemic in the Middle East and Europe in 2015–2018. The use of WGS is highly recommended when investigating LSDV disease outbreaks.

Summary The outbreak of bluetongue virus (BTV) serotype 8 (BTV‐8) during 2006–2009 in Europe was the most costly epidemic of the virus in recorded history. In 2015, a BTV‐8 strain re‐emerged in France which has continued to circulate since then. To examine anecdotal reports of reduced pathogenicity and transmission efficiency, we investigated the infection kinetics of a 2007 UK BTV‐8 strain alongside the re‐emerging BTV‐8 strain isolated from France in 2017. Two groups of eight BTV‐naïve British mule sheep were inoculated with 5.75 log 10 TCID 50 /ml of either BTV‐8 strain. BTV RNA was detected by 2 dpi in both groups with peak viraemia occurring between 5–9 dpi. A significantly greater amount of BTV RNA was detected in sheep infected with the 2007 strain (6.0–8.8 log 10 genome copies/ml) than the re‐emerging BTV‐8 strain (2.9–7.9 log 10 genome copies/ml). All infected sheep developed BTV‐specific antibodies by 9 dpi. BTV was isolated from 2 dpi to 12 dpi for 2007 BTV‐8‐inoculated sheep and from 5 to 10 dpi for sheep inoculated with the remerging BTV‐8. In Culicoides sonorensis feeding on the sheep over the period 7–12 dpi, vector competence was significantly higher for the 2007 strain than the re‐emerging strain. Both the proportion of animals showing moderate (as opposed to mild or no) clinical disease (6/8 vs. 1/8) and the overall clinical scores (median 5.25 vs. 3) were significantly higher in sheep infected with the 2007 strain, compared to those infected with the re‐emerging strain. However, one sheep infected with the re‐emerging strain was euthanized at 16 dpi having developed severe lameness. This highlights the potential of the re‐emerging BTV‐8 to still cause illness in naïve ruminants with concurrent costs to the livestock industry.

Multidrug resistance is an urgent problem for modern medicine and novel antimicrobials are needed. Despite some drawbacks, antimicrobial peptides seem now to appear more numerous in clinical trials, indicating the success in developing peptides into novel therapeutics. This can be critical especially for neonates and children, as treatment options for infections with Gram-negatives in neonatal ICUs are becoming rare.

Abstract:The increasing rates of resistance among bacteria and to a lesser extent fungi have resulted in an urgent need to find new molecules that hold therapeutic promise against multidrug-resistant strains. Antimicrobial peptides have proven very effective against a variety of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Additionally, the low levels of resistance reported towards these molecules are an attractive feature for antimicrobial drug development. Here we summarise information on diverse peptide libraries used to discover or to optimize antimicrobial peptides. Chemical synthesized peptide libraries, for example split and mix method, tea bag method, multi-pin method and cellulose spot method are discussed. In addition biological peptide library screening methods are summarized, like phage display, bacterial display, mRNA-display and ribosomal display. A few examples are given for small peptide libraries, which almost exclusively follow a rational design of peptides of interest rather than a combinatorial approach.