Ehlers B, Küchler J, Yasmum N, Dural G, Voigt S et al. (2007): Identification of Novel Rodent Herpesviruses Including the First Gammaherpesvirus of Mus musculus
J. Virol. 81 (15): 8091-8100, Epub May 16.

Rodent herpesviruses like murine cytomegalovirus (host: Mus musculus), rat cytomegalovirus, (host: Rattus norvegicus) and murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (hosts: Apodemus species) are important tools to experimentally study human herpesvirus diseases. However, alphaherpesviruses, roseoloviruses and lymphocryptoviruses as well as rhadinoviruses, naturally infecting Mus musculus (house mouse) and other Old World mice, are unknown. To identify hitherto unknown rodent-associated herpesviruses, we captured M. musculus, R. norvegicus and 14 other rodent species in several locations in Germany, the United Kingdom and Thailand. Samples of trigeminal ganglia, dorsal root ganglia, brains, spleens and other organs as well as blood were analysed with a degenerate panherpes PCR, targeting the DNA polymerase (DPOL) gene. Herpesvirus-positive samples were subjected to a second degenerate PCR, targeting the glycoprotein B (gB) gene. The sequences located between the partial DPOL and gB sequences were amplified by long-distance-PCR and sequenced, resulting in a contiguous sequence of approximately 3.5 kbp. By DPOL PCR, we detected 17 novel betaherpesviruses and 21 novel gammaherpesviruses, but no alphaherpesvirus. Of these 38 novel herpesviruses, 14 were successfully analysed with the complete bigenic approach. Most importantly, the first gammaherpesvirus of Mus musculus was discovered (Mus musculus rhadinovirus 1, MmusRHV1). This virus is a member of a novel group of rodent gammaherpesviruses, which is clearly distinct from Murine herpesvirus 68-like rodent gammaherpesviruses. Multigenic phylogenetic analysis, using an 8 kbp locus, revealed that MmusRHV1 diverged from the other gammaherpesviruses early after the evolutionary separation of Epstein-Barr virus-like lymphocryptoviruses from human herpesvirus 8-like rhadinoviruses and alcelaphine herpesvirus 1-like macaviruses.