A45 Merkel-cell polyomavirus and human polyomavirus 6 in Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain: Deep characterization of the South American types

CAROLINA TORRES; BARRIOS, MELINA ELIZABETH; CAMMARATA, ROBERTINA VIVIANA; VICTORIA, MATÍAS; FERNANDEZ-CASSI, XAVIER; BOFILL-MAS, SILVIA; COLINA RODNEY; BLANCO FERNANDEZ, MARIA DOLORES; MBAYED, VIVIANA ANDREA

Lisboa

Workshop; 22nd International BioInformatics Workshop on Virus Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology |; 2017

KU LEUVEN

New human polyomaviruses have been discovered in thelast years, including the Merkel-cell (MCPyV) and the humanpolyomavirus 6 (HPyV6). Although their infection is usuallyasymptomatic, in immunocompromised hosts they can causelife-threatening pathologies. In particular, MCPyV has been associatedwith Merkel cell carcinoma, an aggressive skin cancerarising in the elderly and in chronically immunosuppressed individuals.Despite being prevalent viruses, epidemiological datafrom South America are scarce, as too are the viral types circulatingand their origin. The aims of this work were to characterizeMCPyV and HPyV6 from environmental samples withdifferent geographical origins and to analyze the phylogeneticand phylogeographic profiles to study their spatio-temporal dispersionpatterns, particularly for MCPyV. Partial and completegenome sequences were obtained from sewage samples fromArgentina, Uruguay, and Spain. Phylogenetic analysis showedthat MCPyV sequences distributed according to their geographicorigin in Europe/North America, Africa, Asia, South America,and Oceania groups, suggesting that viral diversification mighthave followed human migrations across the globe. In fact, theanalysis of the viruses reported here emphasized this behavior,given that they reflected the origin of the current population ineach country. The South American group presented a high levelof clustering, showing subgroups exclusively formed by sequencesfrom southern South America, possibly associatedwith local diversification events related to early migratorymovements in the region. Regarding HPyV6, sequences fromSouth America grouped with high support and were separated from all other sequences available, from USA, France, Australia,and China. The analysis of viruses from the environment allowedus to characterize prevalent infections in different geographicregions, revealing that viruses circulating in eachpopulation reflected its origin and that there are specific lineagesassociated with South America.