Research Article Identification of a Chicken Anemia Virus Variant-Related

Copyright © 2014 Xinheng Zhang et al.This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The chicken anemia virus (CAV), is a known member of the genus Gyrovirus and was first isolated from chickens in Japan in 1979. Some reports have also demonstrated that CAV can be identified in human stool specimens. In this study, a variant of CAV was detected using PCR with CAV-based primers in fecal samples of stray cats. The genome of CAV variant was sequenced and the results suggest that it could be a recombinant viral strain from parental CAV strains JQ690762 and AF311900. Recombination is an important evolutionary mechanism that contributes to genetic diversification.These findings indicate that CAV variant might have originated fromCAV-infected chickens.The epidemiology and pathogenesis of this novel virus remains to be elucidated.This study underscores the importance of CAV surveillance and it presents the first evidence suggesting the possibility of CAV homologous recombination in cat. 1