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Tuesday, 28 October 2014
REVEALED! Ebola’s family history revealed, See the People Behind It
Researchers have uncovered the history of Ebola – and
found it dates back far further than they expected. The
research shows that filoviruses – a family to which Ebola
and its similarly lethal relative, Marburg, belong – are at
least 16-23 million years old. They say the discovery could
help find new ways to create a vaccine.
The new study is helping to rewrite Ebola’s family history.
Filoviruses likely existed in the Miocene Epoch, and at that
time, the evolutionary lines leading to Ebola and Marburg
had already diverged, the study concludes. The research
was published in the journal PeerJ in September.
It adds to scientists’ developing knowledge about known
filoviruses, which experts once believed came into being
some 10,000 years ago, coinciding with the rise of
agriculture. The new study pushes back the family’s age to
the time when great apes arose.
‘Filoviruses are far more ancient than previously thought,’
says lead researcher Derek Taylor, PhD, a University at
Buffalo professor of biological sciences.
‘These things have been interacting with mammals for a
long time, several million years.’
According to the PeerJ article, knowing more about Ebola
and Marburg’s comparative evolution could ‘affect design
of vaccines and programs that identify emerging
pathogens.’
The research does not address the age of the modern-day
Ebola virus.
Instead, it shows that Ebola and Marburg are each members
of ancient evolutionary lines, and that these two viruses last
shared a common ancestor sometime prior to 16-23 million
years ago.
MARBURG VIRUS DISEASE
Marburg virus disease (MVD) (formerly known as
Marburg haemorrhagic fever) was first identified in 1967
during epidemics in Marburg and Frankfurt in Germany
and Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia from importation
of infected monkeys from Uganda.
MVD is a severe and highly fatal disease caused by a
virus from the same family as the one that causes Ebola
virus disease.
These viruses are among the most virulent pathogens
known to infect humans.
Both diseases are rare, but have a capacity to cause
dramatic outbreaks with high fatality.
Illness caused by Marburg virus begins abruptly, with
severe headache and severe malaise. Many patients
develop severe haemorrhagic manifestations between days
5 and 7, and fatal cases usually have some form of
bleeding, often from multiple sites.
The Marburg virus is transmitted by direct contact with the
blood, body fluids and tissues of infected persons.
Transmission of the Marburg virus also occurred by
handling ill or dead infected wild animals (monkeys, fruit
bats).
Taylor and co-author Jeremy Bruenn, PhD, UB professor of
biological sciences, research viral ‘fossil genes’ — chunks
of genetic material that animals and other organisms
acquire from viruses during infection. The first Ebola
outbreak in humans occurred in 1976, and scientists still
know little about the virus’ history. The same dearth of
information applies to Marburg, which was recognized in
humans in 1967 and implicated in the death of a Ugandan
health worker this month. Understanding the virus’ ancient
past could aid in disease prevention, Taylor says.
He notes that if a researcher were trying to create a single
vaccine effective against both Ebola and Marburg, it could
be helpful to know that their evolutionary lineages diverged
so long ago. Knowing more about filoviruses in general
could provide insight into which host species might serve as
‘reservoirs’ that harbor undiscovered pathogens related to
Ebola and Marburg, Taylor says.
‘When they first started looking for reservoirs for Ebola,
they were crashing through the rainforest, looking at
everything — mammals, insects, other organisms,’ Taylor
says. ‘The more we know about the evolution of filovirus-
host interactions, the more we can learn about who the
players might be in the system.’ In the new study, the
authors report finding remnants of filovirus-like genes in
various rodents.
One fossil gene, called VP35, appeared in the same spot in
the genomes of four different rodent species: two hamsters
and two voles. This meant the material was likely acquired
in or before the Miocene Epoch, prior to when these
rodents evolved into distinct species some 16-23 million
years ago. In other words: It appears that the known
filovirus family is at least as old as the common ancestor of
hamsters and voles.
‘These rodents have billions of base pairs in their genomes,
so the odds of a viral gene inserting itself at the same
position in different species at different times are very
small,’ Taylor says. ‘It’s likely that the insertion was
present in the common ancestor of these rodents.’
The genetic material in the VP35 fossil was more closely
related to Ebola than to Marburg, indicating that the lines
leading to these viruses had already begun diverging from
each other in the Miocene. The new study builds on
Taylor’s previous work with Bruenn and other biologists,
which used viral fossil genes to estimate that the entire
family of filoviruses was more than 10 million years old.
However, those studies used fossil genes only distantly
related to Ebola and Marburg, which prevented the
researchers from drawing conclusions about the age of
these two viral lines.
The current PeerJ publication fills this viral ‘fossil gap,’
enabling the scientists to explore Ebola’s historical
relationship with Marburg.
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