Identification of African swine fever virus-like elements in the soft tick genome provides insights into the virus’ evolution

摘要

Integration sites of ASFLI-elements in the genome of the Ornithodoros moubata cell line OME/CTVM21 genome. Exemplary SPAdes-assembled contigs showing ASFLI-elements (red) adjacent to tick sequences (yellow-striped), genes from mobile genetic elements (green and green striped arrows) and repeat regions (blue arrow, red-striped) identified by BLASTn and BLASTp. Repeat regions refer to repetitive regions in the tick genome as identified by the Geneious ‘Find repeat’ option. They show a nucleotide sequence identity of > 95%. PCR and subsequent sequencing validated the assembly for two major ASFLI-elements (*)