Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered a surrogate virus to African swine fever that can be used to safely develop mitigation strategies.
Associate professor Declan Schroeder says because ASF is a highly contagious foreign animal disease, they were looking for another model with similar characteristics.
“And one virus system that, believe it or not is a virus that infects algae, has a lot of similarities to that of African swine fever virus.”
He tells Brownfield the surrogate is called EhV and one of the similarities is the ability to withstand extreme heat.
