Florida Cat named Pepper brings home for the second time never seen before.

Last year Pepper, a pet cat that roams the backyards of Gainesville, Florida, a new viral burden on a scientist. Now the furry cat is back.

In a new study, scientists once again discovered an exotic virus that infected a dead rodent who was caught by Pfeffer. This time Pepper’s furry hunting trophy helped the researchers to determine an unidentified tribe of orthoreovirus, a kind of virus that infects people and other mammals. The results and the complete genome of the virus are published in the journal Microbiology letters.

John Lednicky, Pepper’s owner and senior author of the study, is a microbiologist at the University of Florida and hunting viruses, similar to Pepper Hunts rodents. It was Lednicky who brought Pepper’s fresh catch to the laboratory for testing.

His analysis showed that the rodent, an Everglades-Short-Tail-Shew, was wearing an orthorovirus strain that had not previously been identified. These types of viruses can infect people and other mammals, but scientists still don’t know much about their effects in humans. However, there were some rare cases of encephalitis, meningitis and gastroenteritis associated with the virus in children. The new virus tribe is officially known as “Gainesville Shrew Mammal Orthoreovirus type 3 trunk UF-1”.

Orthoreoviruses mutate quickly. Similar to the influenza virus, two different types of orthorovirus can infect a single host cell. This means that the two virus strains mix their genomes in the cell and essentially create a new virus.

“The bottom line is that we have to pay attention to Orthoreoviren and know how to quickly find them,” said Lednicky in one opinion.

pepper Last contribution to science Was in May 2021, when he brought an ordinary cotton mouse home with a kind of Jeilong virus that have never been seen in the United States, in contrast to orthorovirus, Jeilong virus also infected reptiles, fish and birds. It can also occasionally cause serious illnesses in humans. The study was released last year.

Since then, Lednicky has also worked hard to identify other new viruses. He adds that it is not too surprising to find a new virus strain because viruses mutate quickly. “I’m not the first to say that, but essentially when you look, you will find out, and that’s why we always find all of these new viruses,” said Lednicky in a explanation.

Next, the researchers are planning to further examine the exotic virus to understand whether it is a threat to humans and pets. But the virus was at least not a threat to pepper, which showed no signs of diseases and carried out field work again.

“This was an opportunistic study,” said Lednicky in a statement. “If you come across a dead animal, why not just buried, a lot of information can be obtained.”