title: Blood transcriptomes reveal novel parasitic zoonoses circulating in Madagascar's lemurs.
abstract: Zoonotic diseases are a looming threat to global populations, and nearly 75% of emerging infectious diseases can spread among wildlife, domestic animals and humans. A 'One World, One Health' perspective offers us an ideal framework for understanding and potentially mitigating the spread of zoonoses, and the island of Madagascar serves as a natural laboratory for conducting these studies. Rapid habitat degradation and climate change on the island are contributing to more frequent contact among humans, livestock and wildlife, increasing the potential for pathogen spillover events. Given Madagascar's long geographical isolation, coupled with recent and repeated introduction of agricultural and invasive species, it is likely that a number of circulating pathogens remain uncharacterized in lemur populations. Thus, it is imperative that new approaches be implemented for de novo pathogen discovery. To this end, we used non-targeted deep sequencing of blood transcriptomes from two species of critically endangered wild lemurs (Indri indri and Propithecus diadema) to characterize blood-borne pathogens. Our results show several undescribed vector-borne parasites circulating within lemurs, some of which may cause disease in wildlife, livestock and humans. We anticipate that advanced methods for de novo identification of unknown pathogens will have broad utility for characterizing other complex disease transmission systems.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA peter.larsen@duke.edu.
authors.forename: Peter A
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3634-3625
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Larsen
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
authors.forename: Corinne E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Hayes
authors.affiliation: Duke Lemur Center, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
authors.forename: Cathy V
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Animal Health, Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, Columbus, OH 43065, USA.
authors.forename: Randall E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Junge
authors.affiliation: Groupe d'Etude et de Recherche sur les Primates de Madagascar, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar.
authors.forename: Josia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Razafindramanana
authors.affiliation: VMC Environment Inc., Toronto, Ontario, M6B 1L9, Canada.
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Mass
authors.affiliation: Ambatovy Minerals S.A., Antananarivo 101, Madagascar.
authors.forename: Hajanirina
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rakotondrainibe
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA Duke Lemur Center, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
authors.forename: Anne D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Yoder
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D056727:Endangered Species; D016905:Gram-Negative Bacterial Infections / Q000097:blood / Q000662:veterinary; D007900:Lemur / Q000097:blood / Q000382:microbiology* / Q000469:parasitology*; D008270:Madagascar; D011529:Protozoan Infections, Animal / Q000097:blood; D059467:Transcriptome; D015047:Zoonoses
keywords: disease surveillance; metagenomics; next-generation; one health; wildlife; zoonotic
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