Arctic and Arctic-like rabies viruses: distribution, phylogeny and evolutionary history

Abstract

Forty-one newly sequenced isolates of Arctic and Arctic-like rabies viruses, were genetically compared to each other and to those available from GenBank. Four phylogenetic lineages of Arctic viruses were identified. Arctic-1 viruses circulate in Ontario, Arctic-2 viruses circulate in Siberia and Alaska, Arctic-3 viruses circulate circumpolarly, and a newly described lineage Arctic-4 circulates locally in Alaska. The oldest available isolates from Siberia (between 1950 and 1960) belong to the Arctic-2 and Arctic-3 lineages and share 98.6-99.2% N gene identity with contemporary viruses. Two lineages of Arctic-like viruses were identified in southern Asia and the Middle East (Arctic-like-1) and eastern Asia (Arctic-like-2). A time-scaled tree demonstrates that the time of the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of Arctic and Arctic-like viruses is dated between 1255 and 1786. Evolution of the Arctic viruses has occurred through a northerly spread. The Arctic-like-2 lineage diverged first, whereas Arctic viruses share a TMRCA with Arctic-like-1 viruses.

Rabies in the Arctic Fox Population, Svalbard, Norway

“…2 (2006). These clusters were mainly in accordance with previously described phylogenetic groups (Mansfield et al, 2006;Kuzmin et al, 2008). At the amino acid level, the homology between the rabies virus isolates in this comparison was even greater; all except one isolate had 100% homology (data not shown).…”

“…For alignment and comparison, corresponding gene sequences from the nucleoprotein gene of previously reported (Mansfield et al, 2006;Johnson et al, 2007;Kuzmin et al, 2008) arctic rabies virus isolates were retrieved from GenBank (National Center for Biotechnology Information [NCBI]; Table 2). All sequences were aligned using two algorithms for comparison, namely Clustal V2 (Larkin et al, 2007) and Muscle 3.6 (Edgar, 2004).…”

“…Characterization of arctic rabies virus isolates with monoclonal antibodies indicated the circulation of a specific arctic rabies virus variant (Schneider et al, 1985) with the arctic fox as the main host (Johnston and Fong, 1992). Recent phylogenetic studies have identified similar rabies virus strains in coastal areas of North America, arctic Russia, and Greenland, indicating that rabies viruses in the arctic fox share common characteristics and have a circumpolar distribution (Mansfield et al, 2006;Kuzmin et al, 2008).…”

Enzootic Rabies Elimination from Dogs and Reemergence in Wild Terrestrial Carnivores, United States

“…This tendency was also consistent for other groups outside the CosC, such as group IX (35,36). Dog rabies epizootics in the Americas seem to be characterized by the circulation of multiple geographic or temporal lineages that have either become extinct or merged over time (2,3,8,10,21,22,(32)(33)(34).…”

Rabies virus strains circulating in Bhutan: implications for control

“…Phylogenetic analyses revealed that Bhutanese RABV isolates were more closely related to the RABV strains from India and Arctic-like-1 viruses circulating in South Asia (Nadin-Davis et al, 2007;Kuzmin et al, 2008), and could be grouped together as a large cluster of the South Asian Arctic-like-1 viruses (Group I in Figure 2). Geographically, Bhutan lies in the same Himalayan region of the Indian subcontinent where the emergence and extensive circulation of the Arctic-like-1 rabies viruses has been confirmed in India (Nadin-Davis et al, 2007).…”