Publications by authors named "Benjamin Dudu Akaibe"
Article Synopsis
- Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a significant global health issue, affecting about 3% of people, but its animal origins remain unclear.
- Recent research in sub-Saharan Africa uncovered 80 hepacivirus-positive samples across diverse small mammal species, revealing a wealth of genetic diversity in these viruses.
- The study highlights rodents as potential reservoirs for hepaciviruses and suggests they could be useful for exploring HCV infection dynamics and evolution.
Background: The speckled-pelage brush-furred rats (Lophuromys flavopunctatus group) have been difficult to define given conflicting genetic, morphological, and distributional records that combine to obscure meaningful accounts of its taxonomic diversity and evolution. In this study, we inferred the systematics, phylogeography, and evolutionary history of the L. flavopunctatus group using maximum likelihood and Bayesian phylogenetic inference, divergence times, historical biogeographic reconstruction, and morphometric discriminant tests.
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