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Journal of Virology, December 1998, p. 10316-10322, Vol. 72, No. 12
Unité d'Epidémiologie des Virus
Oncogènes, Institut Pasteur, 75724 Paris Cedex 15, France1;
National Center for
Biotechnology Information, NIH, Bethesda, Maryland
208922;
Centre International de
Recherches Medicales, Franceville, Gabon3; and
Centre Pasteur du Cameroun, Yaoundé,
Cameroon4
Received 11 May 1998/Accepted 20 August 1998
A recent serological and molecular survey of a semifree-ranging
colony of mandrills (Mandrillus sphinx) living in Gabon,
central Africa, indicated that 6 of 102 animals, all males, were
infected with simian T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (STLV-1). These
animals naturally live in the same forest area as do human inhabitants (mostly Pygmies) who are infected by the recently described human T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 (HTLV-1) subtype D. We therefore investigated whether these mandrills were infected with an STLV-1 related to HTLV-1 subtype D. Nucleotide and/or amino acid sequence analyses of complete or partial long terminal repeat (LTR),
env, and rex regions showed that HTLV-1 subtype
D-specific mutations were found in three of four STLV-1-infected
mandrills, while the remaining monkey was infected by a different
STLV-1 subtype. Phylogenetic studies conducted on the LTR as well as on
the env gp21 region showed that these three new STLV-1
strains from mandrills fall in the same monophyletic clade, supported
by high bootstrap values, as do the sequences of HTLV-1 subtype D. These data show, for the first time, the presence of the same subtype
of primate T-cell lymphotropic virus type 1 in humans and wild-caught
monkeys originating from the same geographical area. This strongly
supports the hypothesis that mandrills are the natural reservoir of
HTLV-1 subtype D, although the possibility that another monkey species
living in the same area could be the original reservoir of both human
and mandrill viruses cannot be excluded. Due to the quasi-identity of
both human and monkey viruses, interspecies transmission episodes leading to such a clade may have occurred recently.
0022-538X/98/$04.00+0
Copyright © 1998, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Simian T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 from Mandrillus
sphinx as a Simian Counterpart of Human T-Cell
Lymphotropic Virus Type 1 Subtype D

*
Corresponding author. Present address: Unité
d'Oncologie Virale, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue du Docteur Roux, 75724 Paris cedex 15, France. Phone: 33 1 45 68 89 36. Fax: 33 1 45 68 89 29. E-mail: agessain{at}pasteur.fr.
Present address: Laboratory of Receptor Biology and Gene
Expression, NCI, NIH, Bethesda, MD 20892.
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