Viral Metagenome-Based Precision Surveillance of Pig Population at Large Scale Reveals Viromic Signatures of Sample Types and Influence of Farming Management on Pig Virome
Biao He, Wenjie Gong, Xiaomin Yan, Zihan Zhao, Ling’en Yang, Zhizhou Tan, Lin Xu, Aiwei Zhu, Jianing Zhang, Jihong Rao, Xinglong Yu, Jianfeng Jiang, Zongji Lu, Yifang Zhang, Jianmin Wu, Yong Li, Yuxiang Shi, Qingwu Jiang, Xiwen Chen, Changchun Tu
Abstract
Pigs are deeply involved in human lives; hence, their viruses are associated with public health. Here, we established the most comprehensive virome of healthy piglets to date, which provides a viromic baseline of weaned pigs for disease prevention and control, highlighting that longitudinal viromic monitoring is needed to better understand the dynamics of the virome in pig development and disease occurrence. The present study also shows how high standards of animal farm management with strict biosafety measures can significantly minimize the risk of introduction of pathogenic viruses into pig farms. Particularly, the viromic strategy established, i.e., high-throughput detection and analyses of various known and unknown pathogenic viruses in a single test at large scale, has completely innovated current surveillance measures in provision of timely and precise detection of all potentially existing pathogenic viruses and can be widely applied in other animal species.