Background: Monkeypox is an infectious disease caused by monkeypox virus (MPXV), which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus of the Poxviridae family. The main clinical signs of monkeypox in humans are maculopapular lesions,... [ view full abstract ]
Background: Monkeypox is an infectious disease caused by monkeypox virus (MPXV), which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus of the Poxviridae family. The main clinical signs of monkeypox in humans are maculopapular lesions, initially occurring on the face in most cases, and rapidly spreading in a centrifugal manner over the entire body. However, it can be difficult to differentiate this disease from smallpox and chickenpox on clinical grounds. Most human monkeypox infections occur in central Africa, principally in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but cases have also been reported in West Africa and in the United States for the first time in 2003. Human infections seem to occur after contact with animals with suspected infection, through biological fluids, a bite, or the consumption of bush meat (rodents or primates) even if the precise animal reservoir of this zoonosis remains unknown. The aim of this study was to sequence and characterize four different strains of Monkeypox virus from individual cases or from outbreak with three-transmission modes- familial, health-care related and transport-related occurring in different geographical localization in CAR between 2001 and 2015.
Methods: DNA of four Monkeypox virus strains was enriched with the use of a specific capture method and sequenced using a MiSeq’s platform. A total of 7.402.694 paired-end reads were obtained, trimmed and filtered according to their quality and size. Whole genomes were obtained after mapping against MKXV genome reference from DRC. All proteins were predicted using FraGeneScan and identification were confirmed by running BLASTX against all monkeypox proteins from UniProt. A multiple sequence alignment identified SNPs or Indels for each strain analyzed.
Results: A total of 191 CDS was predicted and confirmed. Among those, 78.5% (150/191) did not shown any difference at nucleic acid level between these 4 sequences from CAR and the reference sequence of DRC. The analysis of the nucleic sequences of all CDSs revealed that 41 CDSs displayed SNPs. Therefore 21 out of those 41 CDSs had silent mutations. Moreover, 20 CDSs showed several differences at amino acid level. Indeed, the observed SNPs between the 20 CDS either led to no modification in the size of the sequence or caused frame shifts resulting in truncated proteins.
Conclusion: These preliminary analyses showed that these 4 MKXV genomes isolated on a long period of time in CAR had important genetic differences
Sequencing applications for metagenomics, transcriptomics, diagnostics, and biosurveillanc
