{"doi":"10.21203/rs.2.15777/v2","title":"Genomic Nucleotide-Based Distance Analysis for Delimiting Old World Monkey Derived Herpes Simplex Virus Species.","abstract":"Abstract Herpes simplex viruses form a genus within the alphaherpesvirus subfamily, with three identified viral species isolated from Old World monkeys (OWM); Macacine alphaherpesvirus 1 (herpes B), Cercopithecine alphaherpesvirus 2 (SA8), and Papiine alphaherpesvirus 2 (PaHV-2; herpes papio). Herpes B is endemic to macaques, while PaHV-2 and SA8 appear endemic to baboons. All three viruses are genetically and antigenically similar, with SA8 and PaHV-2 thought to be avirulent in humans, while herpes B is a biosafety level 4 pathogen. Recently, next-generation sequencing (NGS) has resulted in an increased number of published OWM herpes simplex genomes, allowing an encompassing phylogenetic analysis. In this study, phylogenetic networks, in conjunction with a genome-based genetic distance cutoff method were used to examine 27 OWM monkey herpes simplex isolates. Genome-based genetic distances were calculated, resulting in distances between Lion and Pig-tailed simplex viruses themselves, and versus herpes B core strains that were higher than those between PaHV-2 and SA8 (approximately 14% and 10% respectively). The species distance cutoff was determined to be 8.94%, with the method recovering separate species status for PaHV-2 and SA8 and showed that Lion and Pig-tailed simplex viruses (vs core herpes B strains) were well over the distance species cutoff. In conclusion, we propose designating Lion and Pig-tailed simplex viruses as separate, individual viral species, and that this may be the first identification of viral cryptic species.","journal":"Research Square","year":2020,"id":128310,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9615,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":431976,"name":"Curtis R. Brandt","orcid":"0000-0001-6468-514X","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":433108,"name":"Aaron W. Kolb","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":72,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:15:38.879956Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}