Simian foamy viruses (SFVs) are retroviruses present in nearly all nonhuman primates (NHPs), including Old World primates (OWP) and New World primates (NWP). While all confirmed human infections with SFV are from zoonotic transmissions originating from OWP, little is known about the zoonotic transmission potential of NWP SFV. We conducted a longitudinal, prospective study of 56 workers occupationally exposed to NWP in Brazil. Plasma from these workers was tested using Western blot (WB) assays containing NWP SFV antigens. Genomic DNA from blood and buccal swabs was analyzed for the presence of proviral SFV sequences by three nested PCR tests and a new quantitative PCR assay. Exposure histories were obtained and analyzed for associations with possible SFV infection. Ten persons (18%) tested seropositive and two persons were seroindeterminate (3.6%) for NWP SFV. Six persons had seroreactivity over 2-3 years suggestive of persistent infection. All SFV NWP WB-positive workers reported at least one incident involving NWP, including six reporting NWP bites. NWP SFV viral DNA was not detected in the blood or buccal swabs from all 12 NWP SFV seroreactive workers. We also found evidence of SFV seroreversion in three workers suggestive of possible clearance of infection. Our findings suggest that NWP SFV can be transmitted to occupationally-exposed humans and can elicit specific humoral immune responses but infection remains well-controlled resulting in latent infection and may occasionally clear.

Despite dramatic growth in the field of primate genomics over the past decade, studies of primate population and conservation genomics in the wild have been hampered due to the difficulties inherent in studying non-model organisms and endangered species, such as lack of a reference genome and current challenges in de novo primate genome assembly. Here, we used Restriction-site Associated DNA (RAD) sequencing to develop a population-based SNP panel for the Ugandan red colobus (P. rufomitratus tephrosceles), which is a highly threatened monkey due to habitat loss. We analyzed blood samples from 24 individuals from Kibale National Park (Uganda) using single-end RAD sequencing. We obtained 70,773,857 reads, of which 58,814,906 passed the filtering steps. Using the program STACKS v. 1.11 we identified 113,376 loci, of which 50,558 were polymorphic and had a mean observed heterozygosity of 0.25. These data will be used to study the effects of habitat fragmentation on genomic diversity, dispersal, and disease transmission in this species. Our approach provides a good example of the potential of RAD sequencing in studies of wild primate populations.

The emergence of pathogens represents substantial threats to public health, livestock, domesticated animals, and biodiversity. How wild populations respond to emerging pathogens has generated a lot of interest in the last two decades. With the recent advent of high-throughput sequencing technologies it is now possible to develop large transcriptomic resources for non-model organisms, hence allowing new research avenues on the immune responses of hosts from a large taxonomic spectra. We here focused on a wild population of the rostrum dace (Leuciscus burgiladensis) that is infected by Tracheliastes polycolpus, an emerging freshwater ectoparasite copepod. We used next generation Illumina sequencing technology to sequence the transcriptome of eight L. burdigalensis adult individuals collected in natura from the same sampling site. Four individuals were non-infected and four individuals were infected by T. polycolpus. We specifically focused on the spleen, the head kidney and epithelial cells and mucus from the fins, three tissues known to be involved in the immune response of fish. We used the Trinity methodology to reconstruct a de novo full-length transcriptome for L. burdigalensis. The resulting transcriptome will serve as an important broad-scale genomic resource for further studying the response of local population of L. burdigalensis to T. polycolpus pressures.