New Adenovirus in Bats, Germany

Abstract

We tested 55 deceased vespertilionid bats of 12 species from southern Germany for virus infections. A new adenovirus was isolated from tissue samples of 2 Pipistrellus pipistrellus bats, which represents the only chiropteran virus isolate found in Europe besides lyssavirus (rabies virus). Evidence was found for adenovirus transmission between bats.

Novel bat adenoviruses with an extremely large E3 gene

“…These isolates are highly conserved at both the genome and cell tropism levels, but are quite different from those of the previously reported bat AdVs, PPV1 (Kohl et al, 2012;Sonntag et al, 2009) and TJM (Li et al, 2010), suggesting that host-specific evolution may have occurred. Like all mastadenoviruses, all these bat AdVs shared a similar genomic structure, with the exception of the E3 and E4 regions.…”

“…Given that over 1000 bat species are known worldwide (Simmons, 2005), the prevalence and number of bat AdV types need to be further investigated. For example, only five successful adenoviral isolations from bats have been reported, including bat AdV-1 FBV1 from Pteropus dasymallus yayeyamae (Maeda et al, 2008), bat AdV-2 PPV1 from Pipistrellus pipistrellus (Sonntag et al, 2009), bat AdV-3 TJM from Myotis ricketti (Li et al, 2010), bat AdV-4 from Rousettus leschenaulti (Raut et al, 2012) and the putative bat AdV-5 from Eidolon helvum . Full-length genomic sequences are currently only available for the TJM and PPV1 strains (Kohl et al, 2012;Li et al, 2010), which were used to establish the species Bat mastadenovirus A and B, respectively.…”

Genome Analysis of Bat Adenovirus 2: Indications of Interspecies Transmission

“…Twenty-nine additional bat AdVs have since been detected in China, Hungary, and Germany (5,7,15), and, by metagenomic study of bat guano specimens, the United States (10). In an initial study of BtAdV-2, a close phylogenetic relationship to canine adenoviruses (CAdVs) was observed (13). Although most AdVs are strictly host specific, CAdVs have been detected in an unusually broad range of carnivores (e.g., bears, wolves, raccoons, and sea lions) (1).…”

“…In 2008, we isolated the first AdV (bat adenovirus 2 Pipistrellus pipistrellus virus 1 [BtAdV-2 PPV1]) from a microchiropteran bat in Germany (13). A second microchiropteran bat AdV (BtAdV-3 strain TJM) was isolated from an Asian bat (Myotis ricketti), and an almost complete genome sequence has been reported (11).…”

Random sampling of the Central European bat fauna reveals the existence of numerous hitherto unknown adenoviruses

“…In 2008, another novel AdV was isolated on Vero cells in Germany from the organ samples of common pipistrelles (Pipistrellus pipistrellus) (Sonntag et al, 2009). The full genome analysis of this AdV, designated BtAdV-2, has been published recently (Kohl et al, 2012).…”