Detection and characterization of diverse alpha- and betacoronaviruses from bats in China

Abstract

Bats have been implicated as important reservoir hosts of alpha- and betacoronaviruses. In this study, diverse coronaviruses (CoVs) were detected in 50 of 951 (positive rate 5.3%) intestinal specimens of eight bat species collected in four provinces and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China by pan-coronavirus RT-PCR screening. Based on 400-nt RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRP) sequence analysis, eight belonged to genus Alphacoronavirus and 42 to Betacoronavirus. Among the 50 positive specimens, thirteen gave rise to CoV full-length RdRP gene amplification for further sequence comparison, of which three divergent sequences (two from a unreported province) were subjected to full genome sequencing. Two complete genomes of betacoronaviruses (JTMC15 and JPDB144) and one nearly-complete genome of alphacoronavirus (JTAC2) were sequenced and their genomic organization predicted. The present study has identified additional numbers of genetically diverse bat-borne coronaviruses with a wide distribution in China. Two new species of bat CoV, identified through sequence comparison and phylogenetic analysis, are proposed.

Genetic diversity of coronaviruses in bats in Lao PDR and Cambodia

“…These results are in line with conclusions of previous studies: all CoVs detected in bats belonging to the Myotis genus were always αCoVs (Tang et al, 2006;Woo et al, 2006;Dominguez et al, 2007;Gloza-Rausch et al, 2008;Osborne et al, 2011;August et al, 2012;Kemenesi et al, 2014;Fischer et al, 2016). βCoVs from lineage D have frequently been found in frugivorous bat species from Madagascar, Kenya, Thailand, and Hong Kong Anindita et al, 2015;Razanajatovo et al, 2015;Wacharapluesadee et al, 2015;Xu et al, 2016). A similar trend was observed in this study, as βCoVs from the lineage D were only affiliated with frugivorous bats.…”

“…Additionally, the PREDICT-CoV-34 strain, detected in Pipistrellus coromandra fell into lineage C of βCoV (BP = 100) which contained sequence from MERS-CoV as well as sequences detected in Pipistrellus from Hong Kong, Neoromicia from South Africa and Myotis from China (Annan et al, 2013;Woo et al, 2006;Corman et al, 2015Corman et al, , 2014Xu et al, 2016). The PREDICT-CoV-34 strain showed the highest similarity to the bat coronavirus isolate JPDB144 recently described in Myotis daubentonii in China (89.5% nucleic acid identity and 95% amino acid identity) (Xu et al, 2016). Sequences from the subcluster 1 displayed similar traits and were only detected in Cambodian Scotophilus (n = 31), with the exception of one sequence detected in Cambodian Pipistrellus (BatCoV512_SL2-9_Pisp).…”

“…Bats have been identified as the natural host of the SARS-CoV, , and recently, the NeoCoV from the clade the Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) was detected in a sub-Saharan bat (Neoromicia capensis) besides its camel host (Corman et al, 2014). A growing number of coronaviruses have been detected in bats since the SARS-CoV outbreak (Chu et al, 2006(Chu et al, , 2008Lau et al, 2007Lau et al, , 2010Lau et al, , 2012Watanabe et al, 2010;Gouilh et al, 2011;Tsuda et al, 2012;Wacharapluesadee et al, 2013Wacharapluesadee et al, , 2015Anindita et al, 2015;Xu et al, 2016, Kim et al, 2016 including a high diversity of coronaviruses, recently detected in five Thai provinces neighboring Cambodia (Wacharapluesadee et al, 2013(Wacharapluesadee et al, , 2015.…”

Aminopeptidase N is not required for porcine epidemic diarrhea virus cell entry

“…In addition, sialoglycoconjugates exposed on cell surfaces can function as auxiliary receptors, though their usage varies among PEDV strains (Deng et al, 2016;Li et al, 2016;Liu et al, 2015). Intriguingly, PEDV can infect cells of many species, including those of pigs, monkeys, cats (Truong et al, 2013), ducks (Khatri, 2015), bats and humans (Xu et al, 2016). The broad cell species tropism of PEDV indicates that the virus binds a host cell surface molecule that is evolutionarily conserved among mammalian species.…”

Coronavirus: epidemiology, genome replication and the interactions with their hosts

“…Niu et al present the development of a new two-tube multiplex real-time reverse transcription PCR to detect six human coronaviruses (Niu et al, 2016). Three articles, authored by Ge et al, Xu et al and Wang et al, describe different discoveries on more diverse bat coronaviruses including SARS-like coronaviruses, highlighting the importance of continued further research on bat-related coronaviruses (Ge et al, 2016;Xu et al, 2016). And Wang et al compared the lentiviruses pseudotyped with S proteins from coronaviruses and cell tropisms of two porcine coronaviruses .…”