Elsevier

Virus Research

Volume 177, Issue 1, October 2013, Pages 113-117
Virus Research

Short communication
Molecular evidence and high genetic diversity of shrew-borne Seewis virus in Slovenia

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.virusres.2013.07.011Get rights and content

Abstract

Seewis virus, the shrew-borne hantavirus from Sorex araneus, has been molecularly detected in reservoir hosts in many different central European countries and Russia. Slovenia is a known endemic country for rodent-borne hantaviruses, therefore the aim of the study was to investigate the presence of shrew-borne hantaviruses in insectivores. Viral L, S and M segment have been recovered only from tissue samples of 7 S. araneus, despite several shrew species were tested. Phylogenetic analysis showed high genetic diversity of SWSV in Slovenia, ranging from 3 to 19.4% for different viral segments. The most divergent were M segment sequences, with 19.4% nucleotide divergence among Slovenian strains. Above that, different SWSV strains from Slovenia do not group into separate geographic clusters. While three separate genetic clades were determined, two of them were simultaneously present in one location at the same time.

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Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Sport of Slovenia (grant no. P3-0083) and by European Commission (European Virus Archive, FP7 CAPACITIES project, GA no. 228292). No additional external funding was received for this study. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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