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Volume 26, Number 12—December 2020
Dispatch

Novel Rickettsia Species Infecting Dogs, United States

James M. Wilson, Edward B. Breitschwerdt, Nicholas B. Juhasz, Henry S. Marr, Joao Felipe de Brito Galvão, Carmela L. Pratt, and Barbara A. QurolloComments to Author 
Author affiliations: North Carolina State University College of Veterinary Medicine, Raleigh, NC, USA (J.M. Wilson, E.B. Breitschwerdt, N.B. Juhasz, H.S. Marr, B.A. Qurollo); VCA Arboretum View Animal Hospital, Downers Grove, Illinois, USA (J.F. de Brito Galvão); Oklahoma Veterinary Specialists, Tulsa Oklahoma, USA (C.L. Pratt)

Main Article

Figure

Multilocus phylogenetic tree of Rickettsia spp. obtained from a dog with Rocky Mountain spotted fever–type symptoms in 2019 (bold) compared with reference sequences. We noted 3 dogs with RSMF symptoms. Rickettsia DNA were identical among all 3 cases; however, complete sequences from all 5 regions were obtained only from case 3, which we used to represent the novel Rickettsia species strain 2019-CO-FNY. We used 2,576 nucleotides concatenated from regions within 3 genes (gltA, htrA, and ompA) and 2 intergenic spacer regions (23S-5S and mmpA-purC). We used the maximum-likelihood method and Tamura-Nei model (6,7) optimized for branch length, topology, and substitution rate to assemble the tree by using the PhyML 3.3.20180621 plugin in Geneious Prime 11.0.0+7 (https://www.geneious.com). Numbers at nodes indicate bootstrap percentages obtained from 1,000 resamplings. Numbers in parentheses are GenBank accession numbers. The tree is drawn to scale. Scale bar indicated the number of nucleotide substitutions per site.

Figure. Multilocus phylogenetic tree of Rickettsia spp. obtained from a dog with Rocky Mountain spotted fever–type symptoms in 2019 (bold) compared with reference sequences. We noted 3 dogs with RSMF symptoms. Rickettsia DNA were identical among all 3 cases; however, complete sequences from all 5 regions were obtained only from case 3, which we used to represent the novel Rickettsia species strain 2019-CO-FNY. We used 2,576 nucleotides concatenated from regions within 3 genes (gltA, htrA, and ompA) and 2 intergenic spacer regions (23S-5S and mmpA-purC). We used the maximum-likelihood method and Tamura-Nei model (6,7) optimized for branch length, topology, and substitution rate to assemble the tree by using the PhyML 3.3.20180621 plugin in Geneious Prime 11.0.0+7 (https://www.geneious.com). Numbers at nodes indicate bootstrap percentages obtained from 1,000 resamplings. Numbers in parentheses are GenBank accession numbers. The tree is drawn to scale. Scale bar indicated the number of nucleotide substitutions per site.

Main Article

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