RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 African nonhuman primates are infected with the yaws bacterium Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 135491 DO 10.1101/135491 A1 Sascha Knauf A1 Jan F. Gogarten A1 Verena J. Schuenemann A1 Hélène M. De Nys A1 Ariane Düx A1 Michal Strouhal A1 Lenka Mikalová A1 Kirsten I. Bos A1 Roy Armstrong A1 Emmanuel K. Batamuzi A1 Idrissa S. Chuma A1 Bernard Davoust A1 Georges Diatta A1 Robert D. Fyumagwa A1 Reuben R. Kazwala A1 Julius D. Keyyu A1 Inyasi A. V. Lejora A1 Anthony Levasseur A1 Hsi Liu A1 Michael A. Mayhew A1 Oleg Mediannikov A1 Didier Raoult A1 Roman M. Wittig A1 Christian Roos A1 Fabian H. Leendertz A1 David Šmajs A1 Kay Nieselt A1 Johannes Krause A1 Sébastien Calvignac-Spencer YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/05/10/135491.abstract AB Treponema pallidum subsp. pertenue (TPE) is the causative agent of yaws. The disease was subject to global eradication efforts in the mid 20th century but reemerged in West Africa, Southern Asia, and the Pacific region. Despite its importance for eradication, detailed data on possible nonhuman disease reservoirs are missing. A number of African nonhuman primates (NHPs) have been reported to show skin ulcerations suggestive of treponemal infection in humans. Furthermore antibodies against Treponema pallidum (TP) have been repeatedly detected in wild NHP populations. While genetic studies confirmed that NHPs are infected with TP strains, subspecies identification was only possible once for a strain isolated in 1966, pinpointing the involvement of TPE. We therefore collected a number of recently isolated simian TP strains and determined eight whole genome sequences using hybridization capture or long-range PCR combined with next-generation sequencing. These new genomes were compared with those of known human TP isolates. Our results show that naturally occurring simian TP strains circulating in three African NHP species all cluster with human TPE strains and show the same genomic structure as human TPE strains. These data indicate that humans are not the exclusive host for the yaws bacterium and that a One Health approach is required to achieve sustainable eradication of human yaws.