title: Chicken anemia virus.
abstract: Chicken anemia virus (CAV), the only member of the genus Gyrovirus of the Circoviridae, is a ubiquitous pathogen of chickens and has a worldwide distribution. CAV shares some similarities with Torque teno virus (TTV) and Torque teno mini virus (TTMV) such as coding for a protein inducing apoptosis and a protein with a dual-specificity phosphatase. In contrast to TTV, the genome of CAV is highly conserved. Another important difference is that CAV can be isolated in cell culture. CAV produces a single polycistronic messenger RNA (mRNA), which is translated into three proteins. The promoter-enhancer region has four direct repeats resembling estrogen response elements. Transcription is enhanced by estrogen and repressed by at least two other transcription factors, one of which is COUP-TF1. A remarkable feature of CAV is that the virus can remain latent in gonadal tissues in the presence or absence of virus-neutralizing antibodies. In contrast to TTV, CAV can cause clinical disease and subclinical immunosuppression especially affecting CD8+ T lymphocytes. Clinical disease is associated with infection in newly hatched chicks lacking maternal antibodies or older chickens with a compromised humoral immune response.
authors.affiliation: Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA. kas24@cornell.edu
authors.forename: K A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Schat
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017727:Chicken anemia virus / Q000502:physiology*; D002645:Chickens; D018173:Circoviridae Infections / Q000662:veterinary* / Q000821:virology; D011201:Poultry Diseases / Q000821:virology*