Recently, Prof. Liu Yan’s team from the School of Basic Medical Sciences of the University published a research paper titled “Complete genome sequencing and comparative genomic analyses of a new spotted-fever Rickettsia heilongjiangensis strain B8” online in the international academic journal Emerging Microbes & Infections (IF=19.568).
The study isolated a new strain of Rickettsia heilongjiangensis for the first time in the central and eastern part of China, and provided a unique potential genetic locus of B8, which can be used for the identification of spotted-fever Rickettsia heilongjiangensis with other Rickettsia heilongjiangensis and spotted-fever Rickettsia with high genomic similarity, and the surveillance of the source of the epidemic. Dr. He Maozhang from the Microbiology Department of the School, graduate students Zhang Lifeng and Hu Haoran, were the co-first authors. Prof. Liu Yan and Dr. Xu Kehan were the co-corresponding authors, and our university was the sole author affiliation.
The research was funded by the National Key Research and Development Program, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, and the Special Project of Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development. This is also the second publication of human tick-borne spotted fever rickettsiae research results by Prof. Liu Yan’s team, following the publication of important research results on new coronaviruses in ACS Nano and JMV (Journal of Medical Virology) in 2021 and 2022, respectively.
Source: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/22221751.2022.2153085