Identification of Diverse Alphacoronaviruses and Genomic Characterization of a Novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Like Coronavirus from Bats in China

Abstract

Although many severe acute respiratory syndrome-like coronaviruses (SARS-like CoVs) have been identified in bats inC oronaviruses (CoVs) in the subfamily Coronavirinae are important pathogens of mammalian and avian animals and currently compose four genera: Alphacoronavirus, Betacoronavirus, Gammacoronavirus, and Deltacoronavirus (1). Members of Alphacoronavirus and Betacoronavirus are found exclusively in mammals, e.g., human CoV 229E, NL63, and OC43, and cause human respiratory diseases (2). A CoV is also the causative agent of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), the first global human pandemic disease of the 21st century, which spread to 30 countries in five continents, resulting in Ͼ8,000 human cases with 774 deaths (3, 4). SARS CoV is a member of the Betacoronavirus genus and is largely distinct from previously known human CoVs OC43 and 229E (5-7). To identify the transmission source of SARS, largescale animal screening was implemented in May 2003, and several strains of SARS CoVs were isolated from nasal and/or fecal swabs of six masked palm civets (Paguma larvata) and one raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides) collected from a wet market in Shenzhen retailing wild animals for exotic foods (8). Their full genome sequences were 99.8% identical to that of human SARS CoV, and therefore civets were deemed to be an animal reservoir of this virus (8). Further serological studies over a larger area revealed that only civets in the market were SARS seropositive, while farmed civets were seronegative, indicating that civets likely became infected from an unknown source in wet markets, not in the farming environment (9). Moreover, a comprehensive analysis of cross-host

Novel coronaviruses, astroviruses, adenoviruses and circoviruses in insectivorous bats from northern China

“…Notably, this may be of public health concern, as both species are in close proximity to human beings: Fringed long‐footed Myotis ( M. fimbriatus ) was collected from a city sewer, and Common Serotine ( E. serotinus ) was captured from rural homes. Despite previous reports of SARS‐like coronaviruses in Rhinolophus bats in China (Chen et al., ; He et al., ; Li et al., ), no SARS‐like coronaviruses were detected in Rhinolophus bats in this study, which may be due to the limited sample size of Rhinolophus bats.…”

Wild boars harboring porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) may play an important role as a PEDV reservoir

“…Although the origin of PEDV in wild boars may be controversial, we assumed that the ancestral PEDV strains in wild boars had evolved consistently until detection. Moreover, Coronaviruses undergo RNA homologous recombination events with high frequency (He et al, 2014;Woo et al, 2010). Several studies determined that the recombination events of PEDV can occur among other PEDV strains as well as between other Coronaviridae (Boniotti et al, 2016).…”

COVID-19: Epidemiology, Evolution, and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives

“…These bats are distributed in many provinces of China. The genetic diversity of these SARS-like-CoVs and their molecular evolution within their natural host species have been studied intensively [2,[8][9][10][11]. Here, we review the recent but still very limited facts about the current epidemiology of COVID-19 and discuss viral characteristics of 2019-nCoV on the backdrop of our knowledge about the previous epidemic of SARS and MERS.…”