The interplay between viruses and the immune system of bats

Abstract

Bats are an abundant and diverse group of mammals with an array of unique characteristics, including their wellknown roles as natural reservoirs for a variety of viruses.These include the deadly zoonotic paramyxoviruses; Hendra (HeV) and Nipah (NiV) 1,2 , lyssaviruses 3 , coronaviruses such as severe acute respiratory coronavirus (SARS-CoV) 4 and filoviruses such as Marburg 5 . Although these viruses are highly pathogenic in other species, including humans, bats rarely show clinical signs of disease whilst maintaining the ability to transmit virus to susceptible vertebrate hosts. In addition, bats are capable of clearing experimental infections with henipaviruses, filoviruses and lyssaviruses at doses of infection that are lethal in other mammals [6][7][8][9][10][11][12] .Curiously, the ability of bats to tolerate viral infections does not appear to extend to extracellular pathogens such as bacteria, fungi and parasites 13 . Over the past few years, considerable headway has been made into elucidating the mechanisms responsible for the ability of bats to control viral replication, with evidence for unique differences in the innate immune responses of bats [14][15][16][17][18][19][20] . However, many Clearly, much remains to be learned about the unique innate immune response of bats.