Detection of Recombinant Rousettus Bat Coronavirus GCCDC1 in Lesser Dawn Bats (Eonycteris spelaea) in Singapore

Abstract

Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1 (RoBat-CoV GCCDC1) is a cross-family recombinant coronavirus that has previously only been reported in wild-caught bats in Yúnnan, China. We report the persistence of a related strain in a captive colony of lesser dawn bats captured in Singapore. Genomic evidence of the virus was detected using targeted enrichment sequencing, and further investigated using deeper, unbiased high throughput sequencing. RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 Singapore shared 96.52% similarity with RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 356 (NC_030886) at the nucleotide level, and had a high prevalence in the captive bat colony. It was detected at five out of six sampling time points across the course of 18 months. A partial segment 1 from an ancestral Pteropine orthoreovirus, p10, makes up the recombinant portion of the virus, which shares high similarity with previously reported RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 strains that were detected in Yúnnan, China. RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 is an intriguing, cross-family recombinant virus, with a geographical range that expands farther than was previously known. The discovery of RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 in Singapore indicates that this recombinant coronavirus exists in a broad geographical range, and can persist in bat colonies long-term.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
May 14, 2020
Source ID
10.3390/v12050539

Entities

People

  • Adrian C. Paskey
  • Casandra W. Philipson
  • Danielle E Anderson
  • Eric D. Laing
  • Gavin J.D. Smith
  • Gregory K. Rice
  • Ian H Mendenhall
  • Justin H. J. Ng
  • Kenneth G. Frey
  • Kimberly A Bishop-Lilly
  • Kyle A. Long
  • Lin-Fa Wang
  • Matthew R. Lueder
  • Randy J.h. Foo
  • Regina Z Cer
  • Theron Hamilton
  • Wan Ni Chia
  • Xiao Fang Lim

Organizations

  • United States Navy

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Biology

Readers

  • East Asian Political and Security Studies within the Soviet Union
  • Educational Psychology
  • Virology (or Medical Virology).