Last year, a pet cat, Pepper, roamed the backyard in Gainesville, Florida, helping scientists discover a new strain of the virus. Now, the furry feline is back to it.
In a new study, scientists have once again discovered a strange virus that infected dead rodents caught by pepper. This time, the Pepper’s Furry Hunting Trophy helped researchers point out an unidentified strain of Orthoreovirus, a virus that infects humans and other mammals. These findings and the complete genome of the virus are published in the Journal Microbiology Information.
The owner of pepper and the lead author of the study, John Lednicky, is a microbiologist at the University of Florida, who is like the Hunters virus hunting rodents. It was Lednicky who brought the fresh capture of pepper into the lab for testing.
His analysis shows that rodents are Everglades short tail paper with previously unknown orthopedic strains. These types of viruses infect humans and other mammals, but scientists still don’t know much about their impact in humans. However, there are some rare cases associated with childhood viruses, meningitis, meningitis and gastritis. The new virus strain is officially known as the “Gainesville sh mammalian orthopedic virus type 3 strain UF-1”.
The orthopedic virus changes rapidly. Like influenza viruses, two different types of viruses, such as teeth, can infect individual host cells. This means that the two strains of virus fuse their genomes into cells, essentially creating a new virus.
“The most important thing is that we need to focus on orthopedic viruses and know how to detect them quickly,” Lednicky said in a statement.
Pepper’s final contribution to science was in May 2021, when he brought back a common cotton mouse that carried a type of jeelongvirus that had never been seen in the United States. In contrast to the orthopedic virus, the Jeron virus infected Thor, fish and birds, except for mammals. It can occasionally cause serious illness in humans. The study was published last year.
Since then, Lednicky has also been working hard to identify other new viruses. He added that finding a new strain of the virus is not too strange because the virus mutates rapidly. “I’m not the first to say that, but essentially, if you see it, you’ll find out, that’s why we continue to find all of these new viruses,” Lednicky said in a statement.
Next, researchers plan to continue studying the fancy virus to see if it poses a threat to humans and pets. However, the virus at least has no threat to peppers, they show no signs of disease and are working in the field again.
“This is an opportunistic study,” Lennik said in a statement. “If you encounter a dead animal, why not test it instead of burying it? There is a lot of information available.”
