A Survey of Recent Adenoviral Respiratory Pathogens in Hong Kong Reveals Emergent and Recombinant Human Adenovirus Type 4 (HAdV-E4) Circulating in Civilian Populations
Jing Zhang,
June Kang,
Shoaleh Dehghan,
Siddharth Sridhar,
Susanna K. P. Lau,
Junxian Ou,
Patrick C. Y. Woo,
Qiwei Zhang,
Donald Seto
Affiliations
Jing Zhang
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong, China
June Kang
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Manassas, VA 20110, USA
Shoaleh Dehghan
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Manassas, VA 20110, USA
Siddharth Sridhar
Department of Microbiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Susanna K. P. Lau
Department of Microbiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Junxian Ou
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong, China
Patrick C. Y. Woo
Department of Microbiology, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Qiwei Zhang
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research, School of Public Health, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou 510515, Guangdong, China
Donald Seto
Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Manassas, VA 20110, USA
Human adenovirus type 4 (HAdV-E4), which is intriguingly limited to military populations, causes acute respiratory disease with demonstrated morbidity and mortality implications. This respiratory pathogen contains genome identity with chimpanzee adenoviruses, indicating zoonotic origins. A signature of these “old„ HAdV-E4 is the absence of a critical replication motif, NF-I, which is found in all HAdV respiratory pathogens and most HAdVs. However, our recent survey of flu-like disease in children in Hong Kong reveals that the emergent HAdV-E4 pathogens circulating in civilian populations contain NF-I, indicating recombination and reflecting host-adaptation that enables the “new„ HAdV-E4 to replicate more efficiently in human cells and foretells more potential HAdV-E4 outbreaks in immune-naïve civilian populations. Special attention should be paid by clinicians to this emergent and recombinant HAdV-E4 circulating in civilian populations.
