Cowpox virus, which has been used to protect humans against smallpox but may cause severe disease in immunocompromised persons, has reemerged in humans, domestic cats, and other animal species in Europe. Orthopoxvirus (OPV) DNA was detected in tissues (lung, kidney, spleen) in 24 (9%) of 263 free-ranging Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) from Sweden. Thymidine kinase gene amplicon sequences (339 bp) from 21 lynx were all identical to those from cowpox virus isolated from a person in Norway and phylogenetically closer to monkeypox virus than to vaccinia virus and isolates from 2 persons with cowpox virus in Sweden. Prevalence was higher among animals from regions with dense, rather than rural, human populations. Lynx are probably exposed to OPV through predation on small mammal reservoir species. We conclude that OPV is widely distributed in Sweden and may represent a threat to humans. Further studies are needed to verify whether this lynx OPV is cowpox virus.
Pubmed ID: 21470451 RIS Download
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Software integrated tool for conducting automatic and manual sequence alignment, inferring phylogenetic trees, mining web based databases, estimating rates of molecular evolution, and testing evolutionary hypotheses. Used for comparative analysis of DNA and protein sequences to infer molecular evolutionary patterns of genes, genomes, and species over time. MEGA version 4 expands on existing facilities for editing DNA sequence data from autosequencers, mining Web-databases, performing automatic and manual sequence alignment, analyzing sequence alignments to estimate evolutionary distances, inferring phylogenetic trees, and testing evolutionary hypotheses. MEGA version 6 enables inference of timetrees, as it implements RelTime method for estimating divergence times for all branching points in phylogeny.
View all literature mentionsSoftware tool as biological sequence alignment editor written for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/7 and sequence analysis program. Provides sequence manipulation and analysis options and links to external analysis programs to view and manipulate sequences with simple point and click operations.
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