Molecular epidemiology and phylogenetic analysis of diverse bovine astroviruses associated with diarrhea in cattle and water buffalo calves in China

ALFRED, Niyokwishimira; LIU, Huan; LI, Mu Lan; HONG, Shao Feng; TANG, Hai Bo; WEI, Zu Zhang; CHEN, Ying; LI, Fa Kai; ZHONG, Yi Zhi; HUANG, Wei Jian

Even though bovine astrovirus was one of the earliest mammalian astroviruses to be discovered and studied in detail, no further research has been performed on this important enteric pathogen over the past three decades, and its genomic sequence remained uncharacterized until its rediscovery and genomic characterization in 2011 in Hong Kong [21] . The lack of large-scale epidemiological surveillance of bovine astrovirus has continued the divergence of opinions on the morbidity of bovine astrovirus in cattle, especially considering that there is no report of astrovirus infection of water buffalo in the current literature. Furthermore, little molecular information about bovine astrovirus is available, and only limited information is available regarding animal astroviruses in general [9] . Therefore, the diversity, epidemiology and molecular characterization of animal astroviruses remain unclear due to the lack of studies, likely because of the difficulty to grow these viruses in cells and tissue cultures.