From Imjin River to Antarctica: Novel Hantaviruses and Adenovirus

Date/Time: 16 July 2012, 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Speaker: Jin-Won Song, M.D., Ph.D.
Speaker Affiliation: Professor, Department of Microbiology, College of Medicine, Korea University, Seoul, Korea
Venue: John A. Burns School of Medicine, Kaka’ako, Medical Education Building Room 301

For more info: Cori Watanabe (808) 692-1654
Description: Hantaan virus, the etiologic agent of clinically severe hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, was first isolated in 1976 from lung tissues of striped field mice (Apodemus agrarius) captured in Songnae-ri, Gyeonggi-do, Korea. With the single exception of Thottapalayam virus, a long-unclassified virus isolated from the Asian house shrew, rodents have been considered the principal reservoir hosts of hantaviruses. Recently, however, Imjin virus was isolated from lung tissues of the Ussuri white-toothed shrew (Crocidura lasiura) trapped near the demilitarized zone in Korea in 2006. Also, Jeju virus was identified in the Asian lesser white-toothed shrew (Crocidura shantungensis) captured on Jeju Island, off the southern coast of Korea, in 2012. Recent discovery of these and other genetically divergent hantaviruses in shrews from widely separated geographic regions challenges the long-accepted dogma that rodents are the sole reservoir hosts of hantaviruses.

Adenoviruses have not been identified in the polar region. Recently, we reported the entire 26,340-bp genome of a novel adenovirus, detected by PCR, in tissues of six of nine South Polar skuas (Catharacta maccormicki), collected in Lake King Sejong, King George Island, Antarctica, from 2007 to 2009. This is the first report of a novel adenovirus, named South Polar skua adenovirus, from a large polar seabird (family Stercorariidae) in Antarctica.