Migratory Birds and Spread of West Nile Virus in the Western Hemisphere

Rappole, John H.; Derrickson, Scott R.; Hubálek, Zdeněk

doi:10.3201/eid0604.000401

Cited by 525 publications

(370 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Avian migration plays an important but little-studied role in the potentially rapid spread of microorganisms from the site of initial acquitision [24]. Understanding how migration affects the composition of the microbial community in the plumage and how this community changes throughout a migrant's annual cycle may provide important insights into microbial dispersal by birds.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation in Plumage Microbiota Depends on Season and Migration

et al. 2009

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Variation in Plumage Microbiota Depends on Season and Migration

et al. 2009

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“…When indicated, the labeled bands were excised from dried gels and quantified by liquid scintillation counting and density analysis using the imagej program, a free software product available at the National Institutes of Health website. 2 The amount of template RNA, NS5, and incubation time for the RdRP assays were chosen from the linear range of RNA synthesis.…”

Section: In Vitro Rdrp Assaymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Serological studies revealed a broad distribution of the virus in Africa, West Asia including India, and the Middle East, but only occasionally isolated in Europe, and is thought to be spread by migratory birds (Ref. 2, for reviews, see…”

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confidence: 99%

Requirements for West Nile Virus (–)- and (+)-Strand Subgenomic RNA Synthesis in Vitro by the Viral RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase Expressed in Escherichia coli

Nomaguchi

Teramoto

et al. 2004

Journal of Biological Chemistry

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West Nile virus (WNV), 1 a mosquito-borne member of Flaviviridae family that consists of more than 70 human pathogens, was first isolated in 1937 from the blood of a female patient in the West Nile district of Uganda (1). Since then, the virus has been isolated in humans, birds, and bird-feeding mosquitoes, Culex univittatus. Serological studies revealed a broad distribution of the virus in Africa, West Asia including India, and the Middle East, but only occasionally isolated in Europe, and is thought to be spread by migratory birds (Ref. 2, for reviews, seeRefs. 3 and 4). WNV belongs to the Japanese encephalitis serocomplex group, which includes St. Louis encephalitis, Murray Valley encephalitis, Kunjin virus, and Japanese encephalitis virus (5, 6). WNV was not previously isolated in the Western hemisphere. The first outbreak of WNV infections occurred in New York in 1999 (7-10) in which 62 people were confirmed to be infected, seven of which were fatal. Since then, transmission of WNV is spreading rapidly throughout the United States; 12 states along the eastern seaboard in 2000 to 25 states and the District of Columbia by 2001 (3).WNV, like other flaviviruses, contain a positive (ϩ)-strand RNA of ϳ11 kb in length that is capped at the 5Ј-end and nonpolyadenylated at the 3Ј-end. WNV RNA contains conserved sequence elements within the 5Ј-and 3Ј-terminal regions (TR), which include two self-complementary cyclization motifs (5Ј-CYC and 3Ј-CYC) of 9 nt in length (11). There is a highly conserved stem-loop structure within the 3Ј-terminal 96 nt of 3Ј-UTR of flaviviral RNAs and a less conserved stem-loop structure within 5Ј-UTR (12-14) (for reviews, see Refs. 4,15,and 16). In addition, there is a potential pseudoknot tertiary structure within the 3Ј-terminal stem-loop structure of WNV RNA (17). Several host proteins have been shown to bind to the 5Ј-and 3Ј-UTR although their functional role in viral RNA replication has not been clearly established (18 -21) (for a review, see Ref. 22). By mutational analysis, the 3Ј stem-loop region within the 3Ј-UTR was shown to be important for viral replication in vivo (23,24) and in vitro (25).The flaviviral RNA genome encodes a single polyprotein precursor that were processed co-translationally and posttranslationally into three structural proteins (capsid, C; precursor membrane, prM; its processed form, membrane protein, M; and the envelope, E) and at least seven nonstructural proteins, NS1, NS2A, NS2B, NS3, NS4A, NS4B, and NS5 (for reviews, see Refs. 4,15,and 16). NS3 is a multifunctional protein; the N-terminal region of NS3 contains the serine protease domain and it requires NS2B for cleavage at the junctions of 2A-2B, 2B-3, 3-4A, and 4B-5. NS3 contains conserved motifs found in RNA helicases of the DEXH family (for reviews, see Refs. 4,15,and 16). Purified NS3 was shown to possess NTPase and RNA helicase activities (26 -32) as well as 5Ј-RNA triphosphatase activity (33, 34), the first enzyme required in 5Ј-cap synthesis.NS5 is the largest of the flaviviral nonstructural pro...

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“…For example, many arboviruses, including the West Nile £avivirus that was recently introduced into northeastern USA (Lanciotti et al 1999;Rappole et al 2000), are spread over large geographical areas by migratory birds that sometimes concentrate in large groups or are vectored by invertebrates such as mosquitoes that also occur in patchy concentrations. However, studying how vector or host density a¡ects arbovirus infection rates is not usually feasible because groups of hosts or vectors are often transient and not restricted to particular sites that can be systematically sampled.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Arbovirus infection increases with group size

Brown

Komar

Quick

et al. 2001

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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Buggy Creek (BCR) virus is an arthropod-borne alphavirus that is naturally transmitted to its vertebrate host the cli¡ swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) by an invertebrate vector, namely the cimicid swallow bug (Oeciacus vicarius). We examined how the prevalence of the virus varied with the group size of both its vector and host. The study was conducted in southwestern Nebraska where cli¡ swallows breed in colonies ranging from one to 3700 nests and the bug populations at a site vary directly with the cli¡ swallow colony size. The percentage of cli¡ swallow nests containing bugs infected with BCR virus increased signi¢cantly with colony size at a site in the current year and at the site in the previous year. This result could not be explained by di¡erences in the bug sampling methods, date of sampling, sample size of the bugs, age structure of the bugs or the presence of an alternate host, the house sparrow (Passer domesticus). Colony sites that were reused by cli¡ swallows showed a positive autocorrelation in the percentage of nests with infected bugs between year t and year t + 1, but the spatial autocorrelation broke down for year t + 2. The increased prevalence of BCR virus at larger cli¡ swallow colonies probably re£ects the larger bug populations there, which are less likely to decline in size and lead to virus extinction. To the authors' knowledge this is the ¢rst demonstration of arbovirus infection increasing with group size and one of the few known predictive ecological relationships between an arbovirus and its vectors/hosts. The results have implications for both understanding the ¢tness consequences of coloniality for cli¡ swallows and understanding the temporal and spatial variation in arboviral epidemics.

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Migratory Birds and Spread of West Nile Virus in the Western Hemisphere

Cited by 525 publications

References 16 publications

Variation in Plumage Microbiota Depends on Season and Migration

Variation in Plumage Microbiota Depends on Season and Migration

Requirements for West Nile Virus (–)- and (+)-Strand Subgenomic RNA Synthesis in Vitro by the Viral RNA-dependent RNA Polymerase Expressed in Escherichia coli

Arbovirus infection increases with group size

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