2024-08-26 03:30:09
A port health worker gives the green light to a traveler at the border crossing between Kenya and Uganda on August 20, 2024 in Malaba, Kenya.
In the summer of 1958, a smallpox-like skin infection broke out among macaques at the Copenhagen State Serum Institute (used for polio research and vaccine production). The analysis revealed the presence of a new virus in the genus Orthopox of the poxvirus family, related to the human smallpox virus. It’s called “monkeypox virus.” Over the next few years, it caused other epidemics in primates at different research institutions in France, the United States, and the Netherlands, but its origins could not be traced.
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Its misleading name reveals one of its characteristics. It is a zoonotic virus that infects a variety of animals, including gambiae rats, striped gerbils, and red-footed day rats, which are African tree-dwelling rodents that are likely hosts. Infections in monkeys occur only occasionally.
Monkeypox virus, renamed mpox in 2022, is a DNA virus that is immediately distinguished from RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19), influenza viruses or HIV because of its slow evolution. The rate is reduced by a factor of a thousand. There are two clades, or clades 1 and 2, present in central and west Africa respectively, with genome composition ranging from 4% to 5%. They are believed to have diverged five hundred and sixty years ago, and climate changes during that time may have affected the geography of tropical forests.
accompanying circulation
Monkeypox viruses are also distinguished by their size. Its genome is about 200,000 base pairs and contains about 200 protein genes, compared with only 10 in the HIV genome. Some of these were known from studies of vaccinia virus, which was not used in the smallpox vaccine until 1980. They are used to propagate viral genomes in infected cells and to build viral particles. Others are attachments, varying in number (67 for monkeypox virus, 53 to 55 for variola virus). Little is known about their role, but they appear to be important for the interaction between the virus and its host.
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“As the smallpox virus adapted from animal hosts to humans, it lost many accessory genes. This is a complex and poorly understood process, and questions remain about their role in regulating the immune response and the range of species the virus can infect,” warns Alex Siegel of the South African Institute of Health Research in Durban. But their affinity for a specific host appears to be important. This is unlike SARS-Cov-2, where this affinity is highly dependent on the receptor. These viruses are more complex. »
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