African swine fever (ASF) is a lethal contagious viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boars caused by the African swine fever virus (ASFV). The pandemic spread of ASF has caused severe effects on the global pig industry. Whole-genome sequencing provides crucial information for virus strain characterization, epidemiology analysis and vaccine development. Here, we evaluated the performance of next-generation sequencing (NGS) in generating ASFV genome sequences from clinical samples. Thirty-four ASFV-positive field samples including spleen, lymph node, lung, liver and blood with a range of Ct values from 14.73 to 25.95 were sequenced. For different tissue samples collected from the same sick pigs, the proportion of ASFV reads obtained from the spleen samples was 3.69-9.86 times higher than other tissues. For the high-viral-load spleen samples (Ct < 20), a minimum of a 99.8% breadth of ≥10× coverage was revealed for all the samples. For the spleen samples with Ct ≥ 20, 6/12 samples had a minimum of a 99.8% breadth of ≥10× coverage. A high average depth of sequencing coverage was also achieved from the blood samples. According to our results, high-quality ASFV whole-genome sequences could be obtained from the spleen or blood samples with Ct < 20. The high-quality ASFV genome sequence generated in this study was further used for the high-resolution phylogenetic analysis of the ASFV genomes in the early stage of the ASF epidemic in China. Our study demonstrates that NGS may act as a useful tool for efficient ASFV genome characterization, providing valuable information for disease control.
The African swine fever (ASF) epidemic has severely challenged the Philippines' swine industry since 2019. The National African Swine Fever Prevention and Control Program (NASFPCP), launched in 2021, aims to provide guidance for managing ASF through surveillance, monitoring, and swine repopulation. This study evaluates the effectiveness of post-outbreak disinfection protocols and government-mandated measures for repopulation standard.
Unlabelled: African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious and often lethal disease caused by African swine fever virus (ASFV) in pigs. Protein palmitoylation is a prevalent posttranslational lipid modification that can modulate viral replication. In this study, we investigated the palmitoylation of ASFV proteins.
African swine fever (ASF) is currently the largest threat to world pork production. The complexity of the virus, its persistence in the environment, the particular immune response it elicits without significant neutralising antibodies, its capacity for transmission by several routes and the presentation of different clinical forms, from acute with high mortality to attenuated to chronic, all pose significant challenges. This article provides an overview of the epidemiological situation of ASF across five continents, the role of wild boar in virus transmission, the development of new immunological tools that aim to enhance protection against this complicated virus in wild boar, and the protection studies that are under way.
African swine fever (ASF) has become a major focus of research after spreading to four continents besides Africa. In its natural African ecosystem, the causative ASF virus (ASFV) is maintained by indigenous Suidae as natural reservoirs and hard tick vectors. However, in Sus scrofa domesticated breeds and wild boar, ASFV causes devastating disease, with mortalities reaching over 90%.
