Abstract
Rotavirus C (RVC) causes enteric disease in multiple species, including humans, swine, bovines, and canines. To date, the evolutionary relationships of RVC populations circulating in different host species are poorly understood, owing to the low availability of genetic sequence data. To address this gap, we sequenced 45 RVC complete genomes from swine samples collected in the United States and Mexico. A phylogenetic analysis of each genome segment indicates that RVC populations have been evolving independently in human, swine, canine, and bovine hosts for at least the last century, with inter-species transmission events occurring deep in the phylogenetic tree, and none in the last 100 years. Bovine and canine RVC populations clustered together nine of the 11 gene segments, indicating a shared common ancestor centuries ago. The evolutionary relationships of RVC in humans and swine were more complex, due to the extensive genetic diversity and multiple RVC clades identified in pigs, which were not structured geographically. Topological differences between trees inferred for different genome segments occurred frequently, including at nodes deep in the tree, indicating that RVC's evolutionary history includes multiple reassortment events that occurred a long time ago. Overall, we find that RVC is evolving within host-defined lineages, but the evolutionary history of RVC is more complex than previously recognized due to the high genetic diversity of RVC in swine, with a common ancestor dating back centuries. Pigs may act as a reservoir host for RVC, and a source of the lineages identified in other species, including humans, but additional sequencing is needed to understand the full diversity of this understudied pathogen across multiple host species.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 546-557 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| Journal | Zoonoses and Public Health |
| Volume | 66 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 2019 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study was partially support by Zoetis (formerly Pfizer Animal Health), the Rapid Agricultural Response Fund, established by the Minnesota legislature and administered by the UM Agricultural Experiment Station, and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Animal Health project accession number 1013569.?N?dia S. Trov?o was supported in part by the National Institutes for Health (NIH)/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) CEIRS contract HHSN272201400008C. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors would like to thank Matthew G. Heffel for his technical assistance.
Funding Information:
This study was partially support by Zoetis (formerly Pfizer Animal Health), the Rapid Agricultural Response Fund, established by the Minnesota legislature and administered by the UM Agricultural Experiment Station, and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Animal Health project accession number 1013569. ND?dia S. Trovão was supported in part by the National Institutes for Health (NIH)/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) CEIRS contract HHSN272201400008C. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent official views of the National Institutes of Health. The authors would like to thank Matthew G. Heffel for his technical assistance.
Keywords
- phylodynamics
- rotavirus C
- surveillance
- whole-genome sequences
