Viral Metagenomic Data Analyses of Five New World Bat Species from Argentina: Identification of 35 Novel DNA Viruses

Abstract

Bats are natural reservoirs of a variety of zoonotic viruses, many of which cause severe human diseases. Characterizing viruses of bats inhabiting different geographical regions is important for understanding their viral diversity and for detecting viral spillovers between animal species. Herein, the diversity of DNA viruses of five arthropodophagous bat species from Argentina was investigated using metagenomics. Fecal samples of 29 individuals from five species (Tadarida brasiliensis, Molossus molossus, Eumops bonariensis, Eumops patagonicus, and Eptesicus diminutus) living at two different geographical locations, were investigated. Enriched viral DNA was sequenced using Illumina MiSeq, and the reads were trimmed and filtered using several bioinformatic approaches. The resulting nucleotide sequences were subjected to viral taxonomic classification. In total, 4,520,370 read pairs were sequestered by sequencing, and 21.1% of them mapped to viral taxa. Circoviridae and Genomoviridae were the most prevalent among vertebrate viral families in all bat species included in this study. Samples from the T. brasiliensis colony exhibited lower viral diversity than samples from other species of New World bats. We characterized 35 complete genome sequences of novel viruses. These findings provide new insights into the global diversity of bat viruses in poorly studied species, contributing to prevention of emerging zoonotic diseases and to conservation policies for endangered species.

Investigation of the Virome and Characterization of Issyk-Kul Virus from Swedish Myotis brandtii Bats

“…Some of these viral families have members with zoonotic potential that have been previously reported in European bats [ 34 ]. Similar viral families have been detected in other bat metagenomic studies from, e.g., Germany [ 11 ], South Africa [ 35 ], Denmark [ 36 ], Argentina [ 37 ] and Croatia [ 38 ]. However, the comparison of viral diversity between different studies is complex and may be attributed to different factors, for example, bat species, sampling location, season, year, sample size, sample type, sample preparation and sequence analysis [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 ].…”

Identification and characterization of novel alphacoronaviruses in Tadarida brasiliensis (Chiroptera, Molossidae) from Argentina: insights into recombination as a mechanism favoring bat coronavirus cross-species transmission

“…Fecal samples were collected from three bat species of the family Molossidae— T . brasiliensis , Eumops bonariensis (Peters, 1874), and M. molossus— at three different geographical sites in the province of Santa Fe (Argentina): downtown Rosario ( T. brasiliensis maternal colony), Villarino Park in Zavalla [both sites described previously by Bolatti et al ( 16 )], and the Ecological Reserve of the National University of the Littoral in Santa Fe (31°38′10″S 60°40′31″W). Samples of T. brasiliensis were collected in 2016/2017 and 2017/2018, whereas samples of E. bonariensis and M. molossus were obtained in 2017 ( Table 1 ).…”

Host and geography impact virus diversity in New Zealand’s longfin and shortfin eels

“…While these viruses shared > 90% amino acid sequence similarity in the highly conserved replication-associated protein, suggesting that they are the same viral species, they possess very different viral genome lengths (1378nt for Anguilla anguilla circovirus genome compared to 2139nt for Long n eel circovirus), which complicates taxonomic assignment. Circoviridae genomes typically range from 1.7kb -2.1kb [69], although variation outside this range has previously been described [70,71]. Consequently, we have provisionally named the newly discovered circovirus, Long n eel circovirus.…”