Primate herpesviruses

Primate herpesviruses belong to the family of Herpesviridae within the Herpesvirales order, and count three subfamilies: alpha, beta, and gamma. To date, eight herpesviruses have been identified in humans, and all, except for human herpesvirus 7, have at least one simian counterpart. Though often very fragmentary, the description in recent years of numerous viruses from various Old and New World nonhuman primates has lead to hypotheses of co-evolution between the viruses and their hosts. These studies demonstrate that most, if not all nonhuman primates can be infected with one or several herpesviruses. Further studies of other viruses showed that they share numerous properties with their counterparts in the same genus: a collinear genetic organization, an almost identical gene repertoire, a similar expression profile, as well as the same modes of transmission, and a close pathogenicity. There are most certainly other herpesviruses of nonhuman primates still to be identified, and further studies should also be performed on those that are currently only partially characterized.Les herpèsvirus de primates appartiennent tous à la famille des Herpesviridae dans l'ordre des Herpesvirales. Ils se répartissent au sein des trois sous-familles Alpha, Beta et Gamma. À ce jour, huit herpèsvirus ont été identifiés chez l'homme et tous, à l'exception de l'herpèsvirus humain 7, possèdent au moins un homologue simien. Bien que souvent très fragmentaire, la description, ces dernières années, de nombreux virus à partir de différentes espèces de primates non-humains de l'ancien et du nouveau monde a permis de développer des hypothèses de co-évolution avec leurs hôtes. Ces études démontrent que la plupart, sinon toutes les espèces de primates non humains, peuvent être infectées par un ou plusieurs herpèsvirus. L'étude plus approfondie d'autres virus montre qu'ils possèdent de nombreuses propriétés en commun avec leurs homologues appartenant au même genre: une organisation génétique colinéaire, un répertoire de gènes quasi à l'identique, un profil d'expression similaire, ainsi que les même modes de transmission et une pathogénicité proche. D'autres virus de primates non humains restent très certainement à identifier. Quant à ceux qui ne sont pour le moment que partiellement caractérisés, ils méritent d'être plus amplement étudiés

Identifiability of Discretized Latent Coordinate Systems via Density Landmarks Detection

Disentanglement aims to recover meaningful latent ground-truth factors from only the observed distribution. Identifiability provides the theoretical grounding for disentanglement to be well-founded. Unfortunately, unsupervised identifiability of independent latent factors is a theoretically proven impossibility in the i.i.d. setting under a general nonlinear smooth map from factors to observations. In this work, we show that, remarkably, it is possible to recover discretized latent coordinates under a highly generic nonlinear smooth mapping (a diffeomorphism) without any additional inductive bias on the mapping. This is, assuming that latent density has axis-aligned discontinuity landmarks, but without making the unrealistic assumption of statistical independence of the factors. We introduce this novel form of identifiability, termed quantized coordinate identifiability, and provide a comprehensive proof of the recovery of discretized coordinates

Oxidative stress biomarkers are associated with visible clinical signs of a disease in frigatebird nestlings

Infectious diseases are one of the most common threats for both domestic and wild animals, but little is known about the effects on the physiological condition and survival of wild animals. Here, we have tested for the first time in a wild vertebrate facing a viral disease possibly due to herpesvirus (i) whether nestlings with either low levels of oxidative damage or high levels of antioxidant protection are less susceptible to develop visible clinical signs, (ii) whether the disease is associated with the nestlings' oxidative status, (iii) whether the association between the disease and oxidative status is similar between males and females (iv), and whether cloacal and tracheal swabs might be used to detect herpesvirus. To address our questions, we took advantage of a population of Magnificent frigatebirds (Fregata magnificens) whose nestlings have experienced high mortality rates in recent times. Our work shows that (i) blood lipid oxidative damage is associated with observable clinical signs and survival probabilities of nestling frigatebirds, and (ii) that high glutathione levels in red blood cells are associated with the emergence of visible clinical signs of the disease. Our work provides evidence that differences in the oxidative status of nestlings might underlie individual health and survival

Reemergence of Dengue Virus Type 4, French Antilles and French Guiana, 2004–2005

After 10 years of absence, dengue virus type 4 (DENV-4) has recently reemerged in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana. Phylogenetic analyses of strains isolated from 2004 to 2005 showed that they belong to DENV-4 genotype II, but to a different cluster than strains isolated from 1993 to 1995