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Novel cytomegaloviruses in free-ranging and captive great apes: phylogenetic evidence for bidirectional horizontal transmission

¹ Research Group Emerging Zoonoses, Robert Koch-Institut, D-13353 Berlin, Germany
² Research Group Molecular Genetics and Epidemiology of Herpesviruses, Robert Koch-Institut, D-13353 Berlin, Germany
³ Institute for Human Genetics and Anthropology, University of Freiburg, D-79106 Freiburg, Germany
⁴ Limbe Wildlife Centre, PO Box 878, Limbe, Cameroon
⁵ Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Department of Primatology, Deutscher Platz 6, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany
⁶ Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust (CSWCT), PO Box 884, Entebbe, Uganda
⁷ Medical Research Council Virology Unit, Institute of Virology, University of Glasgow, Church Street, Glasgow G11 5JR, UK

Correspondence
Bernhard Ehlers
ehlersb{at}rki.de

Wild great apes often suffer from diseases of unknown aetiology. This is among the causes of population declines. Because human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is an important pathogen, especially in immunocompromised individuals, a search for cytomegaloviruses (CMVs) in deceased wild and captive chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans was performed. By using a degenerate PCR targeting four conserved genes (UL54–UL57), several distinct, previously unrecognized CMVs were found for each species. Sequences of up to 9 kb were determined for ten novel CMVs, located in the UL54–UL57 block. A phylogenetic tree was inferred for the ten novel CMVs, the previously characterized chimpanzee CMV, HCMV strains and Old World and New World monkey CMVs. The primate CMVs fell into four clades, containing New World monkey, Old World monkey, orang-utan and human CMVs, respectively, plus two clades that each contained both chimpanzee and gorilla isolates (termed CG1 and CG2). The tree loci of the first four clades mirrored those for their respective hosts in the primate tree, suggesting that these CMV lineages arose through cospeciation with host lineages. The CG1 and CG2 loci corresponded to those of the gorilla and chimpanzee hosts, respectively. This was interpreted as indicating that CG1 and CG2 represented CMV lineages that had arisen cospeciationally with the gorilla and chimpanzee lineages, respectively, with subsequent transfer within each clade between the host genera. Divergence dates were estimated and found to be consistent with overall cospeciational development of major primate CMV lineages. However, CMV transmission between chimpanzees and gorillas in both directions has also occurred.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the UL54–UL57 sequences of novel CMVs described in this study are FJ538485 [GenBank] –FJ538493 [GenBank] , AY129396 [GenBank] , AY129399 [GenBank] and AY728171.

A supplementary table showing degenerate primers for amplification of UL54, UL55 and UL56 sequences is available with the online version of this paper.