Hämmerle, MichelleGuellil, MeriamTrgovec-Greif, LovroCheronet, OliviaSawyer, SusannaRuiz-Gartzia, IruneLizano González, Esther, 1974-Rymbekova, AigerimGelabert Xirinachs, Pere, 1991-Bernardi, PaoloHan, SojungRattei, ThomasSchuenemann, Verena J.Marquès i Bonet, Tomàs, 1975-Guschanski, KaterinaCalvignac-Spencer, SebastienPinhasi, RonKuhlwilm, Martin2025-02-052025-02-052024Hämmerle M, Guellil M, Trgovec-Greif L, Cheronet O, Sawyer S, Ruiz-Gartzia I, et al. Screening great ape museum specimens for DNA viruses. Sci Rep. 2024 Nov 30;14(1):29806. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-80780-w2045-2322http://hdl.handle.net/10230/69493Natural history museum collections harbour a record of wild species from the past centuries, providing a unique opportunity to study animals as well as their infectious agents. Thousands of great ape specimens are kept in these collections, and could become an important resource for studying the evolution of DNA viruses. Their genetic material is likely to be preserved in dry museum specimens, as reported previously for monkeypox virus genomes from historical orangutan specimens. Here, we screened 209 great ape museum specimens for 99 different DNA viruses, using hybridization capture coupled with short-read high-throughput sequencing. We determined the presence of multiple viruses within this dataset from historical specimens and obtained several near-complete viral genomes. In particular, we report high-coverage (> 18-fold) hepatitis B virus genomes from one gorilla and two chimpanzee individuals, which are phylogenetically placed within clades infecting the respective host species.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-80780-wGreat apesHepatitis B virusMuseomicsTarget-enrichment captureVirusesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess