Genome-wide mutational analysis of Chikungunya strains from 2016 to 2017 outbreak of central India: An attempt to elucidate the immunological basis for outbreak.

Chikungunya re-emerged in India in 2016-2017, as the first major outbreak since 2006. In our previous study, we undertook partial E1 gene sequencing and phylogenetic/mutational analysis of strains from the 2016-2017 outbreak of Chikungunya in central India and reported important mutations associated with the outbreak. This study was performed to validate the previous findings and to identify key mutations that had emerged throughout the entire genome of Chikungunya virus that could be driving the enormity of this outbreak.

Detection and seroprevalence of morbillivirus and other paramyxoviruses in geriatric cats with and without evidence of azotemic chronic kidney disease.

Background: Feline morbillivirus (FeMV) is associated with the presence of tubulo-interstitial nephritis (TIN) in cats, however the seroprevalence of FeMV in the UK and the association between the presence of FeMV and renal azotemia is unknown HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES: To identify whether paramyxoviruses are present in urine samples of geriatric cats and to develop an assay to assess FeMV seroprevalence. To investigate the relationship between both urinary paramyxovirus (including FeMV) excretion and FeMV seroprevalence and azotemic chronic kidney disease (CKD).

Animals: Seventy-nine cats (40 for FeMV detection; 72 for seroprevalence).

A viral discovery methodology for clinical biopsy samples utilising massively parallel next generation sequencing.

Here we describe a virus discovery protocol for a range of different virus genera, that can be applied to biopsy-sized tissue samples. Our viral enrichment procedure, validated using canine and human liver samples, significantly improves viral read copy number and increases the length of viral contigs that can be generated by de novo assembly. This in turn enables the Illumina next generation sequencing (NGS) platform to be used as an effective tool for viral discovery from tissue samples.