Virome profiling of bats from Myanmar by metagenomic analysis of tissue samples reveals more novel Mammalian viruses

PLoS One. 2013 Apr 22;8(4):e61950. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0061950. Print 2013.

Abstract

Bats are reservoir animals harboring many important pathogenic viruses and with the capability of transmitting these to humans and other animals. To establish an effective surveillance to monitor transboundary spread of bat viruses between Myanmar and China, complete organs from the thorax and abdomen from 853 bats of six species from two Myanmar counties close to Yunnan province, China, were collected and tested for their virome through metagenomics by Solexa sequencing and bioinformatic analysis. In total, 3,742,314 reads of 114 bases were generated, and over 86% were assembled into 1,649,512 contigs with an average length of 114 bp, of which 26,698 (2%) contigs were recognizable viral sequences belonging to 24 viral families. Of the viral contigs 45% (12,086/26,698) were related to vertebrate viruses, 28% (7,443/26,698) to insect viruses, 27% (7,074/26,698) to phages and 95 contigs to plant viruses. The metagenomic results were confirmed by PCR of selected viruses in all bat samples followed by phylogenetic analysis, which has led to the discovery of some novel bat viruses of the genera Mamastrovirus, Bocavirus, Circovirus, Iflavirus and Orthohepadnavirus and to their prevalence rates in two bat species. In conclusion, the present study aims to present the bat virome in Myanmar, and the results obtained further expand the spectrum of viruses harbored by bats.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Bacteriophages / genetics*
  • Chiroptera / virology*
  • DNA Viruses / genetics*
  • DNA, Viral / genetics*
  • Disease Vectors
  • Genome, Viral
  • High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing
  • Metagenome
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Myanmar
  • Phylogeny
  • Phylogeography
  • Plant Viruses / genetics*
  • Polymerase Chain Reaction
  • RNA Viruses / genetics*
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA
  • Zoonoses

Substances

  • DNA, Viral

Associated data

  • GENBANK/JX863704
  • GENBANK/JX863737
  • GENBANK/KC339249
  • GENBANK/KC339250
  • GENBANK/KC339251

Grants and funding

The study was supported by NSFC-Yunnan Province Joint Fund (U1036601), National “973” Program (grant no. 2012CB722501) and National “863” Program (grant no. 2012AA022006). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.