lineage – Swine in Minnesota

What are PRRS lineages?

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

Following up from last week’s article, Igor Paploski, Mariana Kikuti and Cesar Corzo dig into what PRRS linages are and give background on Lineage 1, and the sublineages that further classify the virus.

Phylogenetic Structure and Sequential Dominance of Sub-Lineages of PRRSV Type-2 Lineage 1 in the United States

In a new study by Paploski et al., researchers from the VanderWaal lab delineated the phylogenetic structure within PRRSV Lineage 1, described past dynamics of different viral strains through quantifying viral population sizes across time, and identified antigenically relevant amino acid changes associated with each sub-lineage.

Key points

Lineage 1 of PRRSV-type 2, which is the most prevalent PRRSV lineage in the U.S., can be sub-divided into eight sub-lineages
We documented the cyclic emergence and turnover of different lineages and sub-lineages (about every 3 years) in the commercial pig population based on both sequence count data and estimated past viral population sizes inferred from genetic diversity through time.
The eight sub-lineages differed in key amino acid sites of the GP5 that are thought to be involved in the immune response to the virus. This lends further strength to the hypothesis that immune-mediated competition or selection may drive the emergence of new PRRSV sub-lineages in the U.S.

Newly emerging PRRSV Lineage 1C variant nomenclature

An issue with the platform prevented this article from being posted on Friday, we apologize for the inconvenience!

This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.

This week, the MSHMP team in collaboration with the VanderWaal lab focuses on the nomenclature of a recently emerged PRRSv variant that has been causing severe clinical signs with associated mortality in swine herds around the USA.

Dynamic network connectivity influences the spread of a sub-lineage of PRRS virus

A study led by Dr. Dennis Makau and the VanderWaal lab was recently published in the journal of Transboundary and Emerging Diseases. In this study, we aimed to quantify the contribution of pig movements to the risk of occurrence of PRRSV Type 2 (RFLP 1-7-4 , a sublineage of lineage 1[L1A]) in the United States.