Recovery of divergent avian bornaviruses from cases of proventricular dilatation disease: Identification of a candidate etiologic agent

Kistler, Amy L; Gancz, Ady; Clubb, Susan; Skewes-Cox, Peter; Fischer, Kael; Sorber, Katherine; Chiu, Charles Y; Lublin, Avishai; Mechani, Sara; Farnoushi, Yigal; Greninger, Alexander; Wen, Christopher C; Karlene, Scott B; Ganem, Don; DeRisi, Joseph L

By combining clinical veterinary medical investigation with comprehensive pan-viral microarray and high throughput sequence analyses, we have identified a highly diverged set of avian bornaviruses directly from tissues of PDD cases, but not controls. These results are significant for a number of reasons. First, they provide a compelling lead in the long-standing search for a viral etiology of PDD, and pave the way for further investigations to assess the link between ABV and PDD. Second, these results also unambiguously demonstrate the existence of an avian reservoir of bornaviruses, expanding our understanding of the bornavirus host range. Finally, these results also provide the first evidence that the Bornaviridae family is not confined to a set of genetically homogeneous species as