Abstract
Bats are implicated as natural reservoirs for a wide range of zoonotic viruses including SARS and MERS coronaviruses, Ebola, Marburg, Nipah, Hendra, Rabies and other lyssaviruses. Accordingly, many One Health surveillance and viral discovery programs have focused on bats. In this report we present viral metagenomic data from bats collected in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia [KSA]. Unbiased high throughput sequencing of fecal samples from 72 bat individuals comprising four species; lesser mouse-tailed bat (Rhinopoma hardwickii), Egyptian tomb bat (Taphozous perforatus), straw-colored fruit bat (Eidolon helvum), and Egyptian fruit bat (Rousettus aegyptiacus) revealed molecular evidence of a diverse set of viral families: Picornaviridae (hepatovirus, teschovirus, parechovirus), Reoviridae (rotavirus), Polyomaviridae (polyomavirus), Papillomaviridae (papillomavirus), Astroviridae (astrovirus), Caliciviridae (sapovirus), Coronaviridae (coronavirus), Adenoviridae (adenovirus), Paramyxoviridae (paramyxovirus), and unassigned mononegavirales (chuvirus). Additionally, we discovered a bastro-like virus (Middle East Hepe-Astrovirus), with a genomic organization similar to Hepeviridae. However, since it shared homology with Hepeviridae and Astroviridae at ORF1 and in ORF2, respectively, the newly discovered Hepe-Astrovirus may represent a phylogenetic bridge between Hepeviridae and Astroviridae.
Highlights
Bats are the second most diverse mammalian order after rodents, comprising more than 1400 species that represent approximately 20% of all mammalian species [1]
Reads and contigs related to ssRNA viruses were abundant in R. hardwickii, T. perforatus and E. helvum bats (50–72%)
Reads and contigs related to ssRNA viruses were found in higher number in E. helvum and R. hardwickii (Fig 1)
Summary
Bats (order Chiroptera) are the second most diverse mammalian order after rodents, comprising more than 1400 species that represent approximately 20% of all mammalian species [1]. As with most groups of mammals, bats are predicted to have a large diversity of viruses, which are currently undescribed [5, 6]. The development of more powerful high throughput sequencing (HTS) technology and bioinformatic tools allow us to better characterize this viral diversity, including analysis of samples from geographic regions that have received little wildlife surveillance attention to date. Several bat virome studies have been published using high-throughput viral metagenomic approaches, revealing a wide range of viruses and expanding our knowledge of viral diversity. Yinda et al reported diverse rotaviruses, bastroviruses and sapoviruses using HTS analysis of Eidolon helvum and Epomophorus gambianus bats from Cameroon [7,8,9,10]
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