Highly read on www.asm.org in October

A mysterious pig virus outbreak that erupted in the United States in May 2013 was imported from China.

A team led by Xiang-Jin Meng and Yao-Wei Huang of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg sequenced the genome of three US strains of porcine epidemic diarrhoea virus (PEDV), which has killed piglets at an alarming rate on hundreds of farms across the country.

The team found that these strains were similar to one found in Anhui province in China in 2010. Furthermore, one section of the PEDV genome is similar to that of a bat virus, suggesting that the pathogen can be transmitted between species.

mBio 4, e00737-13 (2013)