Browsing by Author "Leendertz, Fabian H."

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    Discovery of Novel Herpes Simplexviruses in Wild Gorillas, Bonobos, and Chimpanzees Supports Zoonotic Origin of HSV-2
    (Molecular biology and evolution, 2021) Wertheim, Joel O.; Hostager, Reilly; Ryu, Diane; Merkel, Kevin; Angedakin, Samuel; Arandjelovic, Mimi; Ayuk Ayimisin, Emmanuel; Babweteera, Fred; Yuh, Ginath; Leendertz, Fabian H.; Calvignac-Spencer, Sebastien
    Viruses closely related to human pathogens can reveal the origins of human infectious diseases. Human herpes simplexvirus type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2) are hypothesized to have arisen via host-virus codivergence and crossspecies transmission. We report the discovery of novel herpes simplexviruses during a large-scale screening of fecal samples from wild gorillas, bonobos, and chimpanzees. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that, contrary to expectation, simplexviruses from these African apes are all more closely related to HSV-2 than to HSV-1. Molecular clock-based hypothesis testing suggests the divergence between HSV-1 and the African great ape simplexviruses likely represents a codivergence event between humans and gorillas. The simplexviruses infecting African great apes subsequently experiencedmultiple cross-species transmission events over the past 3My, the most recent of which occurred between humans and bonobos around 1Ma. These findings revise our understanding of the origins of human herpes simplexviruses and suggest that HSV-2 is one of the earliest zoonotic pathogens.
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    Wild Chimpanzees Infected with 5 Plasmodium Species
    (Emerging infectious diseases, 2010) Kaiser, Marco; Löwa, Anna; Ulrich, Markus; Ellerbrok, Heinz; Goffe, Adeelia S.; Blasse, Anja; Zommers, Zinta; Couacy-Hymann, Emmanuel; Babweteera, Fred; Zuberbühler, Klaus; Metzger, Sonja; Geidel, Sebastian; Boesch, Christophe; Gillespie, Thomas R.; Leendertz, Fabian H.
    Despite ongoing and, in some regions, escalating morbidity and mortality rates associated with malariacausing parasites, the evolutionary epidemiology of Plasmodium spp. is not well characterized. Classical studies of the blood pathogens of primates have found protozoa resembling human malaria parasites in chimpanzees and gorillas (1); however, these studies were limited to microscopy, negating conclusions regarding evolutionary relationships between human and ape parasites. Recent studies that used molecular approaches showed that captive and wild chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) and lowland gorillas (Gorilla gorilla), as well as captive bonobos (Pan paniscus), harbor parasites broadly related to P. falciparum (2–5); wild and captive gorillas and captive bonobos and chimpanzees are sometimes infected with P. falciparum itself (4–6). Further, captive chimpanzees and bonobos have been shown to have malaria parasites related to human P. ovale and P. malariae (6–8); P. vivax has been identified in various monkeys and 1 semiwild chimpanzee (5,9). Recently, P. knowlesi, a simian malaria species, became the fifth human-infecting species (10), highlighting the possibility of transmission of new Plasmodium spp. from wild primates to humans.