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Journal of Virology, December 2001, p. 11939-11941, Vol. 75, No. 23
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.23.11939-11941.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Evidence for a Second Simian T-Cell Lymphotropic Virus Type 3 in
Cercopithecus nictitans from Cameroon
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LETTER |
Presently, three types of simian T-cell lymphotropic virus
(STLV) are known. STLV-1 has been detected in more than 20 different Asian and African primate species; STLV-2 has only two known
representatives, in the species Pan paniscus; and STLV-3,
previously named STLV-L, thus far has only one strain, in an Eritrean
Papio hamadryas (1-3, 7, 11). In our search
for African nonhuman-primate retroviruses, 122 Cameroonian
Cercopithecus nictitans were screened for the presence of
STLV. Divergent STLVs were discovered in animals Cni217 and Cni227,
both of which were killed for the bushmeat trade. High titers of STLV
antibodies were detected in whole-blood samples from these animals with
the human T-cell lymphotropic virus type I/II (HTLV-I/-II) kit from
Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Ill.). The Innolia, a line immunoblot
assay (Innogenetics, Ghent, Belgium), showed for both samples a profile
most concordant with those of HTLV-2-infected patients and the
prototype STLV-3 strain PH969 (Fig. 1).
These samples reacted with the generic gag p24-1/2, env gp21-1/2, and env gp46-1/2 peptides, the
HTLV-2-specific env gp46 peptides, and, for Cni227, weakly
with gag p19. A diagnostic, generic, type-specific
tax-rex primate T-cell lymphotropic virus (PTLV) PCR
(12) suggested the presence of divergent STLV proviral DNA. A band of the correct length could be amplified from the two
C. nictitans samples with the generic PTLV PCR. The four
different type-specific inner PCRs, however, discriminating HTLV-1-,
HTLV-2-, STLV-2-, and STLV-3-like viruses, were not able to amplify the STLV proviral DNAs of Cni217 and Cni227. The sequenced inner generic tax-rex Cni217 and Cni227 PCR products of 219 bp exhibited
sequence similarities of 88.6 and 89.0%, respectively, to STLV-3
strain PH969, detected in an Eritrean Papio hamadryas
(3), while nucleotide divergences of 20 to 29% were
evident for the prototypic HTLV-1/STLV-1 and HTLV-2/STLV-2 strains. The
219-bp tax-rex fragments of Cni217 and Cni227 were
phylogenetically analyzed using PAUP*4.0b5 (9). Neighbor-joining (NJ) and maximum-likelihood (ML) trees were
calculated for 22 different taxa by using the Tamura Nei substitution
model (6). The Cni217 and Cni227 strains were found to be
very closely related, and as expected from the Blast
(www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/blast; National Center for Biotechnology
Information, Bethesda, Md.) search results, they both clustered with
PH969 in the NJ tree and the ML tree (100% bootstrap support for NJ;
P < 0.01 for ML) (Fig.
2). The clustering was also
highly supported by parametric bootstrapping of the ML data
through a Monte Carlo simulation (P < 0.01)
(5). Although a phylogenetic analysis of a larger sequenced fragment would result in more accurate evolutionary distances, the NJ analysis of this short tax-rex fragment
nevertheless revealed that the evolutionary distance between PH969 and
Cni217/Cni227 was of the same order of magnitude as the distance
between the prototypic HTLV-2a strains and STLV-2 strain PP1664.
Different PCRs of gene regions covering the long terminal repeat,
env, and 3' pol-pX, performed using degenerative
primers and thus potentially amplifying DNAs of divergent PTLVs, were
optimized on reference strains of the four different PTLV types (HTLV-1
MT2, HTLV-2 Cl19, STLV-2 PP1664, and STLV-3 PH969) but failed to
amplify the STLV-3 C. nictitans gene fragments. This could
be explained in part by the highly divergent character of Cni217 and
Cni227 but probably also by the quality of the extracted DNA, derived
from frozen whole blood collected from slaughtered simians.
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FIG. 1.
Innolia results generated from HTLV-1,
HTLV-2-infected-patient plasma, PH969 serum, Cni217 and Cni227 whole
blood. Lanes 1 and 2 (from the right) contain the positive control (PC)
and negative control (NC) of the kit, respectively. Lanes 3 and 4 show
the results for an HTLV-1- and an HTLV-2-infected-patient sample,
respectively. Lane 4 contains the STLV-3 PH969 sample. Lanes 5 and 6 contain the Cni217 and Cni227 samples, respectively. The first three
control lines contain human immunoglobulin G (IgG) in different
concentrations; they are followed by four confirmation lines (2 gag and 2 env HTLV-1/-2 antigen lines) and then
three discriminatory lines (2 gag HTLV-1 and 1 env HTLV-2 peptide) at the bottom of the strip.
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FIG. 2.
PAUP* NJ tree of a 219-bp tax-rex fragment
including sequences from reference strains of each PTLV type and
subtype, with the bootstrap values (in percent) and P values (**,
P < 0.01; *, P < 0.05) noted on the
branches. Sequences used were as follows: for STLV-3, Cni217
(GenBank accession no. AY039033), Cni227 (AF412120), and PH969
(Y07616); for STLV-2, PP1664 (Y14570) and PanP (U90557); for HTLV-2,
Efe2 (Y14365), GAB (Y13051), G12 (L11456), Gu (X89270), Mo (M10060),
NRA (L20734), and SPVW (AF139382); for STLV-1, TE4 (Z46900); and for
HTLV-1, ATL-YS (U19949), ATK1 (J02029), BOI (L36905), EL (S74562), HS35
(D13784), Mel5 (L02534), MT2 (L03561), RKI3 (AF042071), and TSP1
(M86840).
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Very recently, preliminary results suggested the occurrence of STLV-3
infections in a Cameroonian Cercocebus torquatus
(4), an Ethiopian Theropithecus gelada
(8), and several Ethiopian Papio hamadryas and
Papio hybrids (10). The discovery of
STLV-3-like proviral DNA in the simian species C. nictitans
(sampled at a great distance from the original Papio
hamadryas strain), the only known STLV-3 strain described in
detail thus far, and these preliminary reports of still other STLV-3
infections in diverse primate species indicate that this type of virus
is not restricted to eastern Africa and raises questions about STLV-3
cross-species transmission and infection in other primate species,
including humans.
The fact that the Cni217/Cni227 and PH969 STLV-3 sequences are quite
divergent in this generally very conserved gene region, with a distance
comparable to the one between HTLV-2a strains and the STLV-2 PP1664
strain, suggests that these viruses have undergone a long and
separate evolution within their host species. These
results further strengthen the hypothesis of an African origin for
STLV-3 and PTLV infections.
| |
FOOTNOTES |
*
Phone: 32-16-33 21 60.
Fax: 32-16-33 21 31. E-mail:
annemie.vandamme{at}uz.kuleuven.ac.be.
| |
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| | | | |
Sonia Van Dooren
Marco Salemi
Rega Institute for Medical Research
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Leuven, Belgium
|
| | | | |
Xavier Pourrut
Martine Peeters
Eric Delaporte
Laboratoire Retrovirus
IRD
UR036
Montpellier, France
|
| | | | |
Marc Van Ranst
Anne-Mieke Vandamme*
AIDS Reference
Laboratory
Laboratory for Clinical and
Epidemiological
Virology
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Leuven,
Belgium
|
Journal of Virology, December 2001, p. 11939-11941, Vol. 75, No. 23
0022-538X/01/$04.00+0 DOI: 10.1128/JVI.75.23.11939-11941.2001
Copyright © 2001, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
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