Oral Presentation Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2016

The risk of emerging arboviruses​: Discovery of a divergent group of bunyaviruses​ in Australian mosquitoes (#93)

Jody Hobson-Peters 1 , Breeanna McLean 1 , Agathe Colmant 1 , Caitlin O'Brien 1 , Jessica Harrison 1 , David Warrilow 2 , Andrew F van den Hurk 2 , Marcus Hastie 3 , Jeffrey J Gorman 3 , Daniel Watterson 1 , Cheryl Johansen 4 , Roy Hall 1
  1. Australian Infectious Diseases Research Centre, School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Qld, Australia
  2. Public Health Virology Laboratory, Forensic and Scientific Services, Department of Health, Coopers Plains, Qld, Australia
  3. Protein Discovery Centre, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, Qld, Australia
  4. School of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia

Bunyaviruses have recently caused unprecedented outbreaks of morbidity and mortality in man and animals. Indeed, Crimean Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHFV), Severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome and Heartland viruses have been associated with outbreaks of fatal hemorrhagic fever internationally and are seen as a major emerging risk to human health. Despite these risks, Australia does not conduct routine surveillance for vector-borne bunyaviruses, leaving a fundamental gap in our knowledge of the prevalence and diversity of Australian bunyaviruses and our ability to gauge the potential of these viruses as emerging vector-borne pathogens.

Recent ground-breaking advances in arthropod-borne virus discovery and studies on their evolution, indicates that many pathogenic arboviruses, particularly bunyaviruses, evolved in arthropod hosts1. Through our development of an innovative sequence-independent RNA virus detection system that targets the double-stranded viral RNA (dsRNA) replicative intermediates, in conjunction with bunyavirus-reactive antibodies and genus-specific PCR primers, we have recently identified a series of novel bunyaviruses in mosquito populations of Far North Queensland, Papua New Guinea and Northern NSW. These findings underscore the gross underestimation of bunyaviruses currently circulating within Australian mosquito populations. The viruses at the core of our studies represent the largest, most genetically diverse collection of a new group of mosquito-borne bunyaviruses that form a putative genus in the Bunyaviridae family, provisionally named Goukovirus. Our identification of putative markers of vertebrate virulence and vector-borne transmission in these new bunyaviruses, suggest that they may be at a critical evolutionary point with the potential to infect and cause disease in vertebrates. Furthermore, the genomes of this novel group of viruses, including Badu virus from the Torres Strait in North Queensland, exhibit important evolutionary links to pathogenic bunyaviruses including Rift Valley fever virus and CCHFV.  

Our discovery of the first goukoviruses in Australia provides a unique opportunity to study the evolution of bunyaviruses, investigate their emergence risk, and determine whether the presence of goukoviruses in mosquitoes modulate the transmission of other significant arboviruses.

 

  1. 1 Li, C. X., Shi, M., Tian, J. H., Lin, X. D., Kang, Y. J., Chen, L. J., Qin, X. C., Xu, J., Holmes, E. C. & Zhang, Y. Z. (2015). Unprecedented genomic diversity of RNA viruses in arthropods reveals the ancestry of negative-sense RNA viruses. eLife 4.