2008. (3, 7). Recently, it was shown that colonies of NHPs living in the wild, including various species of monkeys and apes in Africa (mandrills, gorillas, chimpanzees) and Asia (subspecies of macaques), are also infected with simian foamy virus (SFV) (6, 13, 17). The oral mucosa has been shown to be the main site of SFV replication monkeys, and also some divergent SFV sequences from Asian monkeys. Positive PCR products were directly sequenced with an automatic sequencing system (Macrogen, Republic of Korea). The SFV BW-A78U integrase gene sequences obtained were aligned with the ClustalW (1.81) program and then analyzed with Bioedit (http://www.mbio.ncsu.edu/BioEdit/bioedit.html). Phylogenetic trees were constructed by the Bayesian method, as implemented in MrBayes version 3.1 software (23), and TNFRSF10B maximum likelihood was estimated by running the general time-reversible model of evolution (GTR model) with a gamma distribution of rates across sites for 1,000,000 generations with a burn-in of 25%. Parameters were BW-A78U examined with the Tracer program (http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/tracer/), and all estimated sample sizes were greater than 545, as previously described (18). The trees were visualized using the FigTree program (http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree/). SFV contamination in wild-born nonhuman primates. Antibodies to SFV were found in 31 (10.8%) of the 286 NHP plasma samples obtained from wild-born NHPs. The samples showed clear Gag doublet reactivity and were thus considered SFV seropositive (Table 1). Eleven samples were indeterminate, and the other 244 were seronegative. PCR was performed on all 497 NHP DNA BW-A78U samples obtained from 286 buffy coats and 211 tissues (bush meat), including lymph nodes, muscles, lung, and heart. The SFV integrase gene fragment was detected and sequenced in a total of 38 samples (22 from domestic pets, 6 from mandrills in the national park, and 10 from bush meat), including 16 samples, 8 samples, 6 samples, 3 samples, 2 samples, 1 sample, 1 sample, and 1 sample (Table 1). Phylogenetic analyses (Fig. 1) showed that the new sequences obtained from these mandrills and chimpanzees clearly clustered within their respective clades (made up of prototypic sequences). Three new clades, supported by high bootstrap values, were identified: the first corresponded to five new sequences of BW-A78U sequences. The three sequences from (LalKltWd; see the legend to Fig. 1 for sequence designations), (Cne01Wd), and (CtoMinkoWd) also clustered with their respective species clades. Open in a separate window Fig 1 Phylogenetic relationships of integrase gene sequences (425 bp) obtained from 38 wild-born monkeys and apes in Gabon. Phylogenetic tree of new sequences isolated from 16 samples (red), one sample (Lal; brown), one sample (Cne; turquoise), one sample (Cto; red), six samples (blue), three samples (Cni; green), and two samples (Cce; purple) and eight new sequences isolated from (Cpz for chimpanzee; green). NHPs are indicated by the name of the species (e.g., Mnd for mandrill) and the number of the sample (e.g., 122), followed by Wd (wild) for the origin. Cross-species transmission of SFV to humans. Antibodies against SFV were detected in 19 of 78 plasma samples (24%) from people who recalled having been bitten, injured, or scratched by monkeys or apes (see Table S1 in the supplemental material). The SFV integrase gene fragment was detected by PCR in 15.
