rabies virus ( rabv ) is the type species of the lyssavirus genus and the causative agent of rabies . throughout africa , domestic dogs are the principal reservoir for rabv ( 1 ) , transmitting the virus to a wide range of terrestrial mammals , including wildlife , such as the ethiopian wolf ( canis simensis ) ( 2 , 3 ) . the dominant rabv lineage circulating within domestic dogs in ethiopia is africa 1a , which is part of the cosmopolitan lineage ( 4 ) . long - term population monitoring of ethiopian wolves , in combination with laboratory testing of all wolf carcasses recovered , indicates that rabies is not endemic in the wolf population ; rather , rabies epizootics occur in locations with a high density of wolves ( 5 ) . previous outbreaks of rabies in ethiopian wolves have been effectively controlled with parenteral vaccination ( 6 ) . a comparison of the complete virus genomes can enable fine mapping of disease transmission events , such as those that trigger ethiopian wolf rabv epizootics . however , publically available complete genomes for african rabvs are limited . of the 6 africa 1 clade genomes available , only one is an africa-1a bovine isolate from morocco ( accession no . , we describe full - genome sequencing of an africa-1a rabv obtained from an infected ethiopian wolf from the sanetti plateau , bale mountains , southeastern ethiopia ( rv2985 ) , in august 2014 . rna from brain material stored in glycerol was prepared for next - generation sequencing on the miseq platform . briefly , trizol - extracted viral rna was depleted of host genomic dna and rrna , as described previously ( 7 ) . double - stranded ( ds)-cdna was synthesized from 50  ng of rna using a random cdna synthesis system ( roche ) , according to the manufacturer s instructions . the ds - cdna was purified using ampure xp magnetic beads ( beckman coulter ) , and 1  ng was used for the nextera xt dna sample preparation kit ( illumina ) . a sequencing library was prepared according to the manufacturer s instructions and sequenced on an illumina miseq with 2  150-bp paired - end reads , according to standard illumina protocols . the total reads ( 5,333,189 ) were mapped to a reference sequence ( accession no . kf15501 ) using the burrows - wheeler aligner ( bwa ) ( version 0.7.5a - r405 ) ( 8) and were visualized in tablet ( 9 ) . a modified samtools / vcfutils ( 10 ) script was used to generate an intermediate consensus sequence in which any indels relative to the original reference sequence were appropriately called . the intermediate consensus was used as the reference for subsequent iteration of mapping and consensus calling . the total number of assembled viral reads was 4,750 ( 0.09% of the total reads ) . despite the low proportion of viral sequence detected within the total data set , coverage of the entire genome the genetic organization of the ethiopian wolf rabv genome was consistent with that of other rabv genomes , with a complete genome size of 11,926 nucleotides . the lengths of the individual coding regions were conserved ; however , indels were observed in the g - l intergenic region . the ethiopian wolf rabv genome has the closest homology to the moroccan rabv genome sequence ( accession no . future analysis with domestic dog rabv genomes from ethiopia will further our understanding of the cross - species transmissions that lead to epizootic cycles observed in the ethiopian wolf population . the complete genomic sequence of rv2985 has been deposited in genbank under the accession no . the complete genomic sequence of rv2985 has been deposited in genbank under the accession no . kp723638 .
ethiopian wolves are the rarest canid in the world , with only 500 found in the ethiopian highlands . 
 rabies poses the most immediate threat to their survival , causing epizootic cycles of mass mortality . 
 the complete genome sequence of a rabies virus ( rabv ) derived from an ethiopian wolf during the most recent epizootic is reported here .