Yuki Furuse

We analyzed 3,184 cases of coronavirus disease in Japan and identified 61 case-clusters in healthcare and other care facilities, restaurants and bars, workplaces, and music events. We also identified 22 probable primary case-patients for the clusters; most were 20-39 years of age and presymptomatic or asymptomatic at virus transmission.

Abstract Measles, caused by measles virus (MeV), is a common infection in children. MeV is a member of the genus Morbillivirus and is most closely related to rinderpest virus (RPV), which is a pathogen of cattle. MeV is thought to have evolved in an environment where cattle and humans lived in close proximity. Understanding the evolutionary history of MeV could answer questions related to divergence times of MeV and RPV. We investigated divergence times using relaxed clock Bayesian phylogenetics

The M gene of influenza A virus has evolved independently, under different selective pressure on M1 and M2 among different hosts. We found potentially important sites that may be related to host tropism and immune responses. These sites may be important for evolutional process in different hosts and host adaptation.

Since the emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), tremendous efforts have been made to sequence the viral genome from samples collected throughout the world. Here, we evaluate how various countries have performed in sequencing from the perspectives of "fraction", "timeliness", and "openness". We found that high proportions of samples were sequenced in the UK, the USA, Australia, and Iceland; sequencing was performed promptly in Iceland, the Netherlands, and the

Infectious diseases are associated with considerable morbidity and mortality worldwide. Although human, financial, substantial, and time resources are limited, it is unknown whether such resources are used effectively in research to manage diseases. The correlation between the disability-adjusted life years to represent disease burden and number of publications as a surrogate for research activity was investigated to measure burden-adjusted research intensity for 52 infectious diseases at global

MicroRNAs are expressed by all multicellular organisms and play a critical role as post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression. Moreover, different microRNA species are known to influence the progression of a range of different diseases, including cancer and microbial infections. A number of different human viruses also encode microRNAs that can attenuate cellular innate immune responses and promote viral replication, and a fungal pathogen that infects plants has recently been shown to ex

Recent studies about the transcriptome-wide presence of RNA modifications have revealed their importance in many cellular functions. Nevertheless, information about RNA modifications in viral RNA is scarce, especially for negative-strand RNA viruses. Here we provide a catalog of RNA modifications including m1A, ac4C, m7G, inosine, and pseudouridine on RNA derived from an influenza A virus infected into A549 cells, as studied by RNA immunoprecipitation followed by deep-sequencing. Possible region

Detection and isolation of infected people are believed to play an important role in the control of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some countries conduct large-scale screenings for testing, whereas others test mainly people with high prior probability of infection such as showing severe symptoms and/or having an epidemiological link with a known or suspected case or cluster of cases. However, what a good testing strategy is and whether the difference in testing strategy shows a meaningful, measurable im

In the 2006-to-2007 influenza season, amantadine-sensitive strains were found among the N-lineage influenza A (H3N2) viruses, which were previously believed to be associated with amantadine resistance. Whole-genome sequencing results indicated that this was due to a further reassortment event.

Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has been recognized as an important cause of acute respiratory infections. Here we report the molecular epidemiology of EV-D68 in Philippines from 2013 to 2014; we found cases in areas affected by Typhoon Haiyan and found new strains in the country.

Although there have been many epidemiological reports of the inter-country transmission of measles, systematic analysis of the global transmission dynamics of the measles virus (MV) is limited. In this study, we applied phylogeographic analysis to characterize the global transmission dynamics of the MV using large-scale genetic sequence data (obtained for 7456 sequences) from 115 countries between 1954 and 2015. These analyses reveal the spatial and temporal characteristics of global transmissio

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has become a worldwide pandemic. Many projections concerning the outbreak, such as the estimated number of cases and deaths in upcoming months, have been made available. However, what happens to the virus after the pandemic subsides has not been fully explored. In this article, we discuss the ways that past and present human viruses have emerged via zoonotic transmission, the mechanisms that they have acquired the ability for effective