Detection of the virulent Marek's disease virus genome from feather tips of wild geese in Japan and the Far East region of Russia.

Abstract

Marek's disease (MD) virus (MDV) is known to cause malignant lymphomas in chickens. In 2001, we first reported an MD case in a white-fronted goose (Anser albifrons) in Japan. Therefore, the prevalence of MDV in the wild geese was surveyed by nested PCR using feather-tip samples in Japan and the Far East region of Russia, breeding habitats of geese migrating to Japan. MDV was detected in about 30% of analyzed white-fronted geese. Furthermore, by nucleotide sequence analysis, we confirmed that this MDV shows high homology to very virulent MDV, suggesting that highly virulent MDV is widespread in white-fronted geese migrating between Japan and Far East region of Russia.