Development and validation of portable, field-deployable Ebola virus point-of-encounter diagnostic assay for wildlife surveillance.

Unlabelled: Early detection of Ebola virus spillover into wildlife is crucial for rapid response. We developed and validated a portable, cold-chain independent Ebola virus RT-qPCR assay.

Methods: The field syringe-based RNA extraction method was compared with a conventional laboratory-based spin-column RNA extraction method.

Gut microbiomes of wild great apes fluctuate seasonally in response to diet.

The microbiome is essential for extraction of energy and nutrition from plant-based diets and may have facilitated primate adaptation to new dietary niches in response to rapid environmental shifts. Here we use 16S rRNA sequencing to characterize the microbiota of wild western lowland gorillas and sympatric central chimpanzees and demonstrate compositional divergence between the microbiotas of gorillas, chimpanzees, Old World monkeys, and modern humans. We show that gorilla and chimpanzee microbiomes fluctuate with seasonal rainfall patterns and frugivory.

A new approach for monitoring ebolavirus in wild great apes.

Background: Central Africa is a "hotspot" for emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) of global and local importance, and a current outbreak of ebolavirus is affecting multiple countries simultaneously. Ebolavirus is suspected to have caused recent declines in resident great apes. While ebolavirus vaccines have been proposed as an intervention to protect apes, their effectiveness would be improved if we could diagnostically confirm Ebola virus disease (EVD) as the cause of die-offs, establish ebolavirus geographical distribution, identify immunologically naïve populations, and determine whether apes survive virus exposure.