Third EPIZONE meeting on epizootic animal diseases: towards shared genetic information

The EPIZONE project was launched in June 2006 under the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme for Research and Technical Development (FP6), with a budget of 14 million euros for a five-year period. This scientific network, coordinated by the Centraal Instituut voor Dierziekte Controle in Lelystad (Netherlands), involves 19 partner organizations, with 300 researchers working on four main lines of research:

- diagnostics;
- intervention strategies;
- surveillance and epidemiology;
- risk assessment.

CIRAD within EPIZONE

"Teaching and Training" and "Molecular Epidemiology" are the work programmes being coordinated by CIRAD. The aim of the latter topic is to provide access to all the genetic information available on microbial genomes, to boost epidemiology. Complete sequencing has improved considerably in terms of investigation capacity, and bioinformatics methods now enable comparisons of the complete genome sequences of several strains of the same species, both with each other and with those of other related species.

Eventually, a databank will be available to all the researchers in the network, to enable them to identify pools of worthwhile genes (virulence genes, genes coding for proteins involved in adherence to target cells, transport, etc), which are vaccinal and therapeutic targets in the fight against the vectors of diseases such as avian influenza, bluetongue, peste des petits ruminants, African swine fever (ASFV), contagious bovine peripneumonia (CBP), foot and mouth, and Rift Valley fever.

Moreover, in March 2009, CIRAD was planning to set up an inter-laboratory test for the peste des petits ruminants virus, using ELISA serological and PCR molecular methods, for which reagents such as serums and virus strains were due to be distributed to the partners in the operation. One of the EPIZONE themes, "Diagnostics", is dedicated to the development and standardization of diagnostic tools for epizootic diseases.

Inter-laboratory tests are thus regularly set up under the network "to boost the diagnostic capacity of the various laboratories for a given disease ", explains Geneviève Libeau*, who is one of the four internationally renowned scientists invited to speak at the meeting. She will be giving two talks on peste des petits ruminants and recent developments in the Maghreb (see below).

Fifteen CIRAD researchers will also be participating in the Antalya annual meeting, on the following topics:

- review of the inter-laboratory tests organized under EPIZONE, and prospects for standardization
- molecular characterization of virulent Newcastle disease viruses isolated in Mali in 2007 and 2008
- development of a "one-step" RT-PCR multiplex for the detection and sub-typing of human influenza and avian influenza viruses H1, H3, H5, H7, N1 and N2
- identification of the peste des petits ruminants virus in disease foci in Morocco in 2008
- first incursion of peste des petits ruminants in Morocco
- demonstration of recent circulation of the Rift Valley fever virus in Mayotte, a French island in the Indian Ocean.

* CIRAD researcher with the Emerging and Exotic Animal Disease Control Joint Research Unit