The Threat of Potentially Pathogenic Bacteria in the Feces of Bats

Abstract

Bats are one of the most diverse and widely distributed groups of mammals living in close proximity to humans. In recent years, bat-borne viruses and the viral zoonotic diseases associated with bats have been studied in great detail.

Morphological and genomic characteristics of two novel actinomycetes, Ornithinimicrobium sufpigmenti sp. nov. and Ornithinimicrobium faecis sp. nov. isolated from bat faeces (Rousettus leschenaultia and Taphozous perforates)

“…Compared with viruses, there are few studies on the microorganism carried by bats, particularly the reports of new bacterial species that are straightforward to be neglected ( Muhldorfer, 2013 ). Our laboratory has investigated the intestinal and fecal flora of bats since 2018 to identify potentially pathogenic microbial species and dissect the process of disease transmission ( Huang et al., 2022c ). So far, we have published over ten new species of bacteria isolated from bat feces, among which Brevibacterium zhoupengii ( Huang et al., 2022a ), Microbacterium fandaimingii ( Zhou et al., 2021 ), Gordonia zhenghanii , G. liuliyuniae ( Huang et al., 2022b ), Tomitella gaofuii and T. fengzijianii ( Huang et al., 2022d ) belong to the phylum Actinobacteria.…”

“…Moreover, the fecal microbiota in bats was found to be diverse with predominant bacterial phylum Proteobacteria and Firmicutes ( Sun et al., 2020 ; Huang et al., 2022c ). The presence of opportunistic pathogens Citrobacter freundii , Escherichia coli , Enterococcus faecalis , Serratia fonticola, Shigella flexneri , and Rahnella aquatilis were also recorded ( Muhldorfer, 2013 ; Wolkers-Rooijackers et al., 2019 ).…”

“…The specific latitude and longitude are E102°04′39″, N25°09′10″ (Yunnan) and E106°49′20″, N22°20′54″ (Guangxi) ( Table S1 ). In addition, the species of bats have been identified as Rousettus leschenaultia and Taphozous perforates by blasting the cytochrome b gene sequence ( Huang et al., 2022c ). Sample collection, transportation and storage were almost like what was delineate antecedently ( Ge et al., 2012 ; Huang et al., 2022a ).…”

Bat-associated microbes: Opportunities and perils, an overview

“…Thus, the identity of the suspected/confirmed human pathogen depends on the excreta type, which has implications for disease transmission to humans. Another study using PacBio sequencing in the faeces of Chinese bats identified 480 species-level phylotypes (SLP), of which 32 were known human pathogens, while another 40 were flagged as potential human pathogens [ 62 ]. Monitoring of bacterial metagenomes shed in bats’ saliva, urine, and faeces may enable the surveillance and early detection of zoonotic pathogens.…”

Pathogenic taxa constitute a substantial portion of bat and wild bird fecal bacterial microbiota

“…This is a notable divergence from the shorter read lengths associated with other sequencing techniques, e.g., on the V4 region of 16S rRNA gene. To the best of our knowledge, only two previous microbiota studies on bats and none on wild birds have used long read sequencing, i.e., PacBio study in China 14 and Oxford Nanopore study in Spain 15 . In addition to PacBio approach, we used traditional gene-targeted PCR with Sanger sequencing to elaborate the bacterial species-specific data.…”