PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jing Wang
AU  - Yuan-fei Pan
AU  - Li-fen Yang
AU  - Wei-hong Yang
AU  - Chu-ming Luo
AU  - Juan Wang
AU  - Guo-peng Kuang
AU  - Wei-chen Wu
AU  - Qin-yu Gou
AU  - Gen-yang Xin
AU  - Bo Li
AU  - Huan-le Luo
AU  - Yao-qing Chen
AU  - Yue-long Shu
AU  - Deyin Guo
AU  - Zi-Hou Gao
AU  - Guodong Liang
AU  - Jun Li
AU  - Edward C. Holmes
AU  - Yun Feng
AU  - Mang Shi
TI  - Individual bat viromes reveal the co-infection, spillover and emergence risk of potential zoonotic viruses
AID  - 10.1101/2022.11.23.517609
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.11.23.517609
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/23/2022.11.23.517609.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/11/23/2022.11.23.517609.full
AB  - Bats are reservoir hosts for many zoonotic viruses. Despite this, relatively little is known about the diversity and abundance of viruses within bats at the level of individual animals, and hence the frequency of virus co-infection and inter-species transmission. Using an unbiased meta-transcriptomics approach we characterised the mammalian associated viruses present in 149 individual bats sampled from Yunnan province, China. This revealed a high frequency of virus co-infection and species spillover among the animals studied, with 12 viruses shared among different bat species, which in turn facilitates virus recombination and reassortment. Of note, we identified five viral species that are likely to be pathogenic to humans or livestock, including a novel recombinant SARS-like coronavirus that is closely related to both SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV, with only five amino acid differences between its receptor-binding domain sequence and that of the earliest sequences of SARS-CoV-2. Functional analysis predicts that this recombinant coronavirus can utilize the human ACE2 receptor such that it is likely to be of high zoonotic risk. Our study highlights the common occurrence of inter-species transmission and co-infection of bat viruses, as well as their implications for virus emergence.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.