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Published December 11, 2015 | Version v1
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Data from: Investigating the zoonotic origin of the West African Ebola epidemic

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Charité
  • 2. Robert Koch Institute
  • 3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
  • 4. Eidolon ekologi Kållered Sweden*
  • 5. Philipp University of Marburg
  • 6. Laboratoire National d'Appui au Développement Agricole
  • 7. Université Alassane Ouattara
  • 8. University of Ulm
  • 9. Max Planck Institute for Ornithology

Description

The severe Ebola virus disease epidemic occurring in West Africa stems from a single zoonotic transmission event to a 2-year-old boy in Meliandou, Guinea. We investigated the zoonotic origins of the epidemic using wildlife surveys, interviews, and molecular analyses of bat and environmental samples. We found no evidence for a concurrent outbreak in larger wildlife. Exposure to fruit bats is common in the region, but the index case may have been infected by playing in a hollow tree housing a colony of insectivorous free-tailed bats (Mops condylurus). Bats in this family have previously been discussed as potential sources for Ebola virus outbreaks, and experimental data have shown that this species can survive experimental infection. These analyses expand the range of possible Ebola virus sources to include insectivorous bats and reiterate the importance of broader sampling efforts for understanding Ebola virus ecology.

Notes

Partial mitochondrial cytochrome b and 16S sequences from bats captured in southeastern Guinea, 2014
Comprises all Sanger sequences generated for this study. Individuals were only assigned to the genus-level in the field. BLAST results were combined with this field assignment and further biological information (species distribution) to perform the final assignment. Sequence names are built as follows: sample #_final assignment.
MariSaez_Bat_mtDNA.fasta
Partial mitochondrial 16S sequences from soil samples from Meliandou, Guinea, 2014
This ZIP file comprises demultiplexed FASTQ files corresponding to 30 PCR products sequenced on a MiSeq. A tab-delimited list is provided as the ReadMe.
MariSaez_soil_16S_MiSeq.7z

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README_for_MariSaez_soil_16S_MiSeq.txt

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Additional details

Related works

Is cited by
10.15252/emmm.201404792 (DOI)