Susceptibility of Beavers to Chronic Wasting Disease

Allen Herbst; Serene Wohlgemuth; Jing Yang; Andrew R Castle; Diana Martinez Moreno; Alicia Otero; Judd M Aiken; David Westaway; Debbie McKenzie

doi:10.3390/biology11050667

Susceptibility of Beavers to Chronic Wasting Disease

Biology (Basel). 2022 Apr 26;11(5):667. doi: 10.3390/biology11050667.

Authors

Allen Herbst^{1

2

3}, Serene Wohlgemuth^{2

4}, Jing Yang^{2

4}, Andrew R Castle^{2

4}, Diana Martinez Moreno^{2

5}, Alicia Otero⁶, Judd M Aiken^{2

3}, David Westaway^{2

4}, Debbie McKenzie^{2

5}

Affiliations

¹ U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center, Madison, WI 53711, USA.
² Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada.
³ Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada.
⁴ Department of Medicine, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada.
⁵ Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB T6G 2R3, Canada.
⁶ Centro de Encefalopatias y Enfermedades Transmisibles Emergentes, University of Zaragoza, 50009 Zaragoza, Spain.

Abstract

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, fatal, neurodegenerative prion disease of cervids. The expanding geographical range and rising prevalence of CWD are increasing the risk of pathogen transfer and spillover of CWD to non-cervid sympatric species. As beavers have close contact with environmental and food sources of CWD infectivity, we hypothesized that they may be susceptible to CWD prions. We evaluated the susceptibility of beavers to prion diseases by challenging transgenic mice expressing beaver prion protein (tgBeaver) with five strains of CWD, four isolates of rodent-adapted prions and one strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. All CWD strains transmitted to the tgBeaver mice, with attack rates highest from moose CWD and the 116AG and H95+ strains of deer CWD. Mouse-, rat-, and especially hamster-adapted prions were also transmitted with complete attack rates and short incubation periods. We conclude that the beaver prion protein is an excellent substrate for sustaining prion replication and that beavers are at risk for CWD pathogen transfer and spillover.

Keywords: beavers; chronic wasting disease; prions; wildlife diseases.

Grants and funding

This work was performed as part of the “Systems Biology and Molecular Ecology of Chronic Wasting Disease” project funded by Genome Canada, Genome Alberta, the Alberta Prion Research Institute, Alberta Agriculture and Forestry and the University of Alberta. Transgenesis was performed at the University of Alberta Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry Transgenic Core, RRID:SCR_019175, which receives financial support from the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry, the University of Alberta, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) by awards to the contributing investigators.