JVI Accepts, published online ahead of print on 4 November 2009

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J. Virol. doi:10.1128/JVI.01226-09
Copyright (c) 2009, American Society for Microbiology and/or the Listed Authors/Institutions. All Rights Reserved.

Extensive host sharing of Central European Tula virus

Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, Sandra Essbauer, Rasa Petraityte, Kumiko Yoshimatsu, Kirsten Tackmann, Franz J. Conraths, Kestutis Sasnauskas, Jiro Arikawa, Astrid Thomas, Martin Pfeffer, Jerrold J. Scharninghausen, Wolf Splettstoesser, Matthias Wenk, Gerald Heckel, and Rainer G. Ulrich^*

Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine, Hamburg, Germany; Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology, Munich, Germany; Institute of Biotechnology, Vilnius, Lithuania; Institute for Animal Experimentation, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan; Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Institute for Epidemiology, Wusterhausen, Germany; Department of Global Health, College of Public Health, University of South Florida, Tampa, USA; Landesforstanstalt Eberswalde, Eberswalde, Germany; Computational and Molecular Population Genetics (CMPG), Institute of Ecology and Evolution, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland; Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut, Federal Research Institute for Animal Health, Institute for Novel and Emerging Infectious Diseases, Greifswald - Insel Riems, Germany

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: rainer.ulrich{at}fli.bund.de.

To examine the host association of Tula virus (TULV), a hantavirus present in large parts of Europe, we investigated a total of 791 rodents representing 469 Microtus arvalis and 322 M. agrestis from northeast, northwest and southeast Germany including geographical regions with sympatric occurrence of both vole species for the presence of TULV infections. Based on serological investigation as well as RT-PCR and subsequent sequence analysis of partial S and M segments we herein show that TULV is not only carried by its commonly known host M. arvalis but also frequently by M. agrestis in different regions of Germany for a prolonged time period. At one trapping site TULV was exclusively detected in M. agrestis suggesting an isolated transmission cycle in this rodent reservoir separate from spillover infections of TULV-carrying M. arvalis. Phylogenetic analysis of the S- and M-segment sequences demonstrated geographical clustering of the TULV sequences irrespective of the host, M. arvalis or M. agrestis. The novel TULV lineages from northeast, northwest and southeast Germany described here are clearly separated from each other and from other German, European or Asian lineages suggesting their stable geographical localization and fast sequence evolution. In conclusion, these results demonstrate that TULV represents a promiscuous hantavirus with a large panel of susceptible hosts. In addition, this may suggest an alternative evolution mode, other than a strict co-evolution, for this virus in its Microtus hosts which should be proven in further large-scale investigations on sympatric Microtus hosts.