TDK conference 2017

To discover the diversity of wild bird adenoviruses, is still a great task for the researchers in the field of virology nowadays. The aim of my research was to screen Hungarian free-living birds for adenoviruses, and later I had the chance to examine also king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) from Tierra del Fuego, Chile. This penguin species has not been tested in this context yet, so this promised to be the first documented case of king penguin adenovirus infection. A nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was applied to detect adenoviruses in the samples. Later, the newly found king penguin adenovirus was also tested for the presence of the sialidase gene, and intra-species characterization was conducted, too, by analysing the hexon, the major capsid protein encoding gene. Two samples from the total 38 yielded positive result: a mistle thrush (Turdus viscivorus) and a king penguin. The partial DNA polymerase amino acid sequence of the mistle thrush adenovirus showed more than 15% phylogenetic distance compared to previously characterized species. Thus, we propose it as a novel adenovirus species in the genus Aviadenovirus. Based on the same amino acid stretch, the detected penguin adenovirus belongs to the already accepted species: Pingvin siadenovirus A, but the strain can be classified as a separate, novel type. The hexon amino acid based comparative phylogenetic analysis of the penguin adenoviruses yielded five monophyletic clades, possibly virus types. We confirmed furthermore, that the penguin siadenoviruses do not possess a sialidase gene, otherwise characteristic for siadenoviruses.