The determinants of African Swine Fever Virus Virulence. The Georgia 2007 strain and the host response.

African Swine Fever Virus is causing the death of hundreds of millions of pigs worldwide. There are substantial differences between lab adapted and highly aggressive ASFV strains, but the molecular determinants for virulence at the level of gene expression have remained opaque. Here we characterise the transcriptome of ASFV Georgia 2007 during infection of their physiologically relevant host cells, porcine macrophages. GRG represents the original culprit which gave rise to the virulent Genotype II strains spreading first across Europe, and more recently in Asia. We have used Cap Analysis Gene Expression sequencing to map the 5 prime ends of mRNAs at nucleotide resolution, transcription start sites and the global promoter landscape of GRG.