Like many other members of the Phlebovirus genus, SFTSV uses ticks as a putative host vector and is likely to be transmitted to human populations from an animal reservoir via blood feeding (Elliott, 2008).
Furthermore, the interconnectedness of modern society means that diarrhoeal diseases from distant locations where pathogens thrive and there is minimal sanitation and hand-washing facilities for workers can be transmitted to unsuspecting populations elsewhere.
Influenza infection in a sow herd can cause abortion and can be transmitted to a vulnerable population including their piglets.
These cases of intercontinental transmission highlight the relative ease by which meningococcal strains can be transmitted to immunologically naïve populations through global travel activity.
This study was conducted in June 2008 to survey bats in Papua New Guinea to determine the presence of various known bat viruses and to assess the potential of these viruses to be transmitted to the bat populations in Australia.
As an arbovirus, bluetongue virus (BTV), the aetiological agent of BT, depends almost entirely on the presence of competent Culicoides biting midges to be transmitted to the local host population.
Once resistant strains of HIV are selected in the host population, they can be transmitted to new hosts and spread in the population at risk.
For instance, co-culturing of stem cells with animal derived feeder cells has been shown to present the risk of contamination with retroviruses or other pathogens that could be transmitted to patients and the wider population [1], [2].
Recombinant chromosomes Ab and Ba (the superscripts indicate B genome alleles in an A genome background, and vice versa) could then be transmitted to gametes and maintained in the population, leading to secondary diploids with genome constitutions such as AbA, AbB, ABa and BBa and eventually to triploids of constitution AbAA, AbAB, etc.
In parallel, it could be tempting to extend the definition of genetic load ie, the aggregate of deleterious genes that are carried, mostly hidden, in the genome of a population and may be transmitted to descendants to involve retrotransposon activity.
