Detection of pigeon circoviruses in ticks of sheep and camels in Inner Mongolia, China

Circovirus is one of the smallest known DNA viruses infecting animals. In this report, circovirus was detected in two tick species- Hyalomma asiaticum and Dermacentor nuttalli collected from sheep and camels in Inner Mongolia, China by high-throughput sequencing. The reverse semi-nested PCR assay revealed a complete genomic sequence of 2042 base pairs of cyclic single-stranded DNA (ssDNA). Evolutionary analysis further revealed that it belonged to circovirus with two major open read frames (ORFs) that putatively encode replicase and capsid proteins, respectively. Sequence and phylogenetic analysis suggested that the circovirus belonged to pigeon circovirus. The results demonstrated the presence of pigeon circovirus in ticks in Inner Mongolia, which provide the basis for future exploration of the prevalence of pigeon circovirus in Inner Mongolia and the pathogens carried by ticks in Inner Mongolia.