Abstract
Bats can carry important zoonotic pathogens. Here we use a combination of next-generation sequencing and classical virus isolation methods to identify novel nairoviruses from bats captured from a cave in Zambia. This nairovirus infection is highly prevalent among giant leaf-nosed bats, Hipposideros gigas (detected in samples from 16 individuals out of 38). Whole-genome analysis of three viral isolates (11SB17, 11SB19 and 11SB23) reveals a typical bunyavirus tri-segmented genome. The strains form a single phylogenetic clade that is divergent from other known nairoviruses, and are hereafter designated as Leopards Hill virus (LPHV). When i.p. injected into mice, the 11SB17 strain causes only slight body weight loss, whereas 11SB23 produces acute and lethal disease closely resembling that observed with Crimean–Congo Haemorrhagic Fever virus in humans. We believe that our LPHV mouse model will be useful for research on the pathogenesis of nairoviral haemorrhagic disease.
Highlights
Random-shotgun sequencing using next-generation sequencing (NGS) demonstrated the presence of nairovirus-related genome sequences in the supernatants (Supplementary Fig. 1)
The results showed that 16,626 of 30,252 and 30,894 of 50,583 reads from the culture supernatants inoculated with liver and lung homogenates from bats collected in 2011, respectively, could be annotated to nairovirus sequences using BLAST searches
In relation to viruses known to be associated with the development of haemorrhagic fevers the most likely host of Marburg virus (MARV) is the fruit bat R. aegyptiacus in Africa and recently a novel ebolavirus-like filovirus has been found in Miniopterus schreibersii in Spain[2,27]
Summary
We use a combination of next-generation sequencing and classical virus isolation methods to identify novel nairoviruses from bats captured from a cave in Zambia. This nairovirus infection is highly prevalent among giant leaf-nosed bats, Hipposideros gigas (detected in samples from 16 individuals out of 38). We describe the isolation of novel nairoviruses from Hipposideros gigas bats in Zambia and demonstrate that specific strains of this virus produce a profound haemorrhagic disease in mice, which is clinically and pathologically similar to human CCHF
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