Publication details
Murine Cytomegalovirus in the European House Mouse Hybrid Zone - From Field Work to Genome Characterization
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| Year of publication | 2016 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Murine cytomegalovirus (MCMV) is an enveloped dsDNA virus (family Herpesviridae) which is normally used to model human cytomegalovirus infection. The host species of MCMV is the house mouse in which the virus produces persistent asymptomatic or latent infections. Two taxa of house mice, Mus musculus musculus and Mus musculus domesticus meet and hybridize along a 2500 km long front streching from Scandinavia to the Black Sea. At this front the taxa form a narrow hybrid zone, a tension zone species barrier. A preliminary study across a transect in the Bavarian/Bohemian part of the house mouse hybrid zone (HMHZ) showed that each mouse taxon carried different MCMV strains. Therefore the HMHZ may serve as a suitable natural system for studying recombination between divergent viral strains, a potentially important natural evolutionary process allowing strains to overcome the host species barrier and to infect a new host taxon. House mouse tissues (especially saliva and salivary glands) were collected across the Bavarian/Bohemian region of the HMHZ to investigate the prevalence of MCMV and for subsequent isolation and genomic characterization of the different viral strains. Molecular screening of 155 saliva samples revealed a prevalence of 83%. A subset of positive individuals were then used for MCMV reactivation in vitro directly from salivary glands and part of the enriched samples were sequenced using the HiSeq 2500 next generation sequencing technology for to obtain the viral genome of MCMV from Mus musculus musculus, not yet available in public database. These data will serve as a basis to study MCMV genomic diversity and recombination in the HMHZ. |