The post How a Florida House Cat Helped Scientists Find New Viruses appeared first on A-Z Animals.
Almost every indoor/outdoor cat worth its salt will bring home presents in the form of mice. Little do most cat owners realize that these treats may very well contain eureka moments. Take Pepper, a 7-year-old cat from Gainesville, Florida. He may be a great hunter, but he’s also in the habit of delivering scientific breakthroughs.
These breakthroughs, however, require expert scientific knowledge. Luckily for Pepper and the world, he lives with Dr. John A. Lednicky, a virologist and research professor at the University of Florida. In the spirit of scientific discovery, Lednicky started bringing Pepper’s presents into his research lab to test them. This led to the discovery of a brand-new virus strain. Let’s learn more about Dr. Lednicky, who took time out of his busy schedule to talk to A-Z-Animals.com. We’ll also discuss his cat Pepper, how this breakthrough transpired, and what it means for future scientific endeavors.
Meet the Expert
As Lednicky said about this photo, “I don’t know which of us two is the scarier one.”
©Courtesy of Dr. John Lednicky
Dr. John Lednicky is one of the most esteemed virologists in the country. He’s also a current research professor in the Department of Environmental and Global Health at the University of Florida’s College of Public Health and Health Professions, with an affiliation to the Emerging Pathogens Institute. His focus is on several main areas: influenza studies, virus discovery, and aerovirology.
Every superhero has an origin story, and Lednicky is no exception. A trained microbiologist with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D., he first became passionate about the subject after a chance encounter with a ‘prince of darkness. As a young man in the Philippines, Lednicky was treated to dinner by some friends.
They told him it was pork, but it was actually fruit bat stew, which was infected with some kind of virus. This caused him to become severely ill. He survived, but with a newfound fascination for viruses. “I had the respiratory infection from hell, and it made me wonder if it was a virus or a bacterium from the bat,” says Lednicky. “So that experience really intrigued me, and I wanted to be a virologist.”
His work both inside and outside the lab has led to some notable discoveries. Not only did his team detect the first Zika and Mayaro viruses in Haiti, but they also played a big role in isolating and sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Lednicky’s extensive work studying novel viruses infecting farmed deer in Florida, by way of scientific serendipity, led him to his cat’s mice presents and their potential use for study.
Pepper
Pepper is still teaching his little brother Jaha the ways of the hunter.
©Courtesy of Dr. John Lednicky
A true cat lover, Dr. Lednicky and his family own two male cats, Pepper and Jaha. Pepper is the elder statesman of the duo, and delights in bringing home different treasures, mostly rodents that live in a patch of trees behind Lednicky’s home. “The other one is younger, and he’s learning the ropes from Pepper,” says Lednicky.
While Jaha is still learning the art of the hunt, Pepper has it down to a science; he brings fresh kills to Lednicky’s doorstep several times a week like clockwork. “My cats bring me presents,” says Lednicky. “I’m not quite sure what the psychology behind it is, other than that they think we aren’t very good hunters.
The Process of Discovery
Deer farming is one of the fastest-growing agricultural industries in Florida, which brings deer viruses and diseases with it.
©Omar F Martinez/Shutterstock.com
As with many scientific discoveries, Lednicky and his team’s discovery of a new virus came accidentally, or at the very least, laterally. Deer farming is a rapidly growing industry in rural America, and Florida already has a significant number of deer farms. However, deer are vulnerable to two main viruses: Blue Tongue Virus and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease.
For a long time, it was thought that these diseases were transmitted to deer only by biting midges, also known as ‘no-see-ums.‘ Frustrated farmers reached out to scientists like Lednicky. He took his team on-site for further investigation. “Upon examining [the deer], we started to discover other viruses that cause hemorrhagic and other fatal diseases in deer, especially in fawns,” says Lednicky.
One of the most surprising discoveries, however, was mule deer pox virus (MDPV). As evidenced in this paper, co-written by Lednicky, no one knew this virus was in Florida. Rodents are natural reservoirs for pox viruses, including monkeypox and the aforementioned mule deer pox virus. Trapping rodents is hard, and getting funding for animal studies is even harder, so Lednicky saw an opportunity in his household hunters. “If my cats bring me rodents, instead of wasting them, we could get some useful information from them,” says Lednicky.
True Scientific Spirit
Pepper the cat, pictured here on Dr. Lednicky’s lap, is both an expert hunter and scientific innovator.
©
It turns out, one of the rodents that Pepper brought home had some incredibly useful information, but not the kind that Dr. Lednicky was expecting. One Everglades short-tailed shrew contained an entirely new virus. Extracted and detected from the shrew by Ph.D. student Emily DeRuyter, the virus was named Gainesville shrew mammalian orthoreovirus type 3 strain UF-1.
It’s a novel type of orthoreovirus, which has previously been found in bats, white-tailed deer, and humans. While it is typically symptomless in humans, orthoreviruses have links to rare pediatric cases of meningitis and encephalitis. “So we’ve found viruses, just not deer pox,” Lednicky says, laughing.
This isn’t the only time Pepper has inadvertently helped discover a new virus. Previously, he brought home a cotton mouse containing a never-before-seen jeilongvirus, the first jeilongvirus ever found in the United States, and one genetically much older than related strains. Jeilongviruses belong to a little-understood family of viruses that have the potential for animal-to-human crossover. “No one is quite sure what they do to their host,” says Lednicky. “The thinking is, in most cases, it won’t do anything, but we just don’t know yet right now.”
Cat Disease Control
Cats wipe out many species, but also serve as one of the few predators left in urbanized ecosystems.
©Romuald Cisakowski/Shutterstock.com
In suburbs across the country, prey animals reign supreme. Urbanization has effectively wiped out most predators. This, in turn, lets prey animals run amok, reproducing at uncontrollable rates. Animals like rodents, for example, are serious transmitters of disease. In the area around Dr. Lednicky’s home in suburban Gainesville, Florida, the only predator that tempers the rodent population is the domestic cat.
Some people are very surprised, for example, when I say that if I check anybody’s saliva—any adult’s saliva—I’ll find a virus that causes mononucleosis because we get exposed to it.
Dr. John Lednicky, virologist
The kitties have gotten a lot of flak in recent years for their role in wiping out bird species. While it’s true that cats can wreak havoc, as Lednicky points out, they are also the first line of ecosystem defense against excessive virus and disease proliferation. Cats evolved to eat small vermin, like rodents, so they aren’t affected by the diseases these animals carry in the same way that humans or other animals are. “Go to silos where grain is being stored…If you don’t have cats around there, they get overrun with rodents right away.”
Implications for the Field
Viruses are everywhere, but getting funding for their transmission between animals and humans can be tricky.
©Kharaim Pavlo/Shutterstock.com
Most people don’t realize the sheer number of viruses present in the air, in animals, and even in themselves at any given moment. There’s a very good chance that you have viruses in your system right now that could kill other creatures with ease. “Some people are very surprised, for example, when I say that if I check anybody’s saliva—any adult’s saliva—I’ll find a virus that causes mononucleosis because we get exposed to it,” says Lednicky. “We keep the virus with us for life; it’s just that our immune system keeps it under control.”
Lednicky, his team, and Pepper’s scientific work show just how many viruses live all around us at any given moment. Conventional thinking tends to fall by the wayside every time a new virus strain is found in an area where it’s never been detected before.
This can come as a surprise, even to an expert like Dr. Lednicky, who’s always refining detection strategies. “Viruses are very challenging because you can’t see them. So you have to be able to invent methods to study them,” he says. “You have to think through the science very clearly.”
The post How a Florida House Cat Helped Scientists Find New Viruses appeared first on A-Z Animals.
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