Epidemic and evolutionary characteristics of peste des petits ruminants virus infecting Procapra przewalskii in Western China

Due to the migration or transboundary spread of domestic and wild animals, peste des petits ruminants virus posed a high potential threat to them. In this study, we initially detected that a class of animal named Procapra przewalskii was infected with peste des petits ruminants virus (PPRV ChinaGS2018) in Gansu province. According to phylogenetic relationships analysis, we found that ChinaGS2018 comprised of 15,954 nucleotides and was classified into IV genotypes. In addition, indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) showed that ChinaGS2018 could infect isolated primary goat tracheal epithelium cells (GTC). Comparing with full-length genome sequences revealed that ChinaGS2018 strain has high identity to the reference complete genomes (87.16-99.55%) at the nucleotide level. Multiple sequence alignment showed that F protein has the highest identity of 99.8%, and H protein has the highest nucleotide substitution ratio. Our study also suggested this strain may be transmitted from Xinjiang, China. Along with the migratory of Procapraprzewalskii, this wild ruminant infected with PPRV can pose a huge threat to other wild ruminants and domestic ones. This is the first report describing infected with PPRV which will provide insights into the epidemiology and pathogenesis of this important virus.