Bats host major mammalian paramyxoviruses

Drexler, Jan Felix; Corman, Victor Max; Müller, Marcel Alexander; Maganga, Gael Darren; Vallo, Peter; Binger, Tabea; Gloza-Rausch, Florian; Rasche, Andrea; Yordanov, Stoian; Seebens, Antje; Oppong, Samuel; Sarkodie, Yaw Adu; Pongombo, Célestin; Lukashev, Alexander N.; Schmidt-Chanasit, Jonas; Stöcker, Andreas; Carneiro, Aroldo José Borges; Erbar, Stephanie; Maisner, Andrea; Fronhoffs, Florian; Buettner, Reinhard; Kalko, Elisabeth K.V.; Kruppa, Thomas; Franke, Carlos Roberto; Kallies, René; Yandoko, Emmanuel R.N.; Herrler, Georg; Reusken, Chantal; Hassanin, Alexandre; Krüger, Detlev H.; Matthee, Sonja; Ulrich, Rainer G.; Leroy, Eric M.; Drosten, Christian

Major PV genera in bats. The genus Rubulavirus contains three human pathogens, the mumps virus, as well as the respiratory viruses, Parainfluenzavirus 2 and 4. A large range of novel rubulaviruses in fruit-and insect-eating African bats were identified in addition to those six bat rubulaviruses previously known (Fig. 2a , Supplementary Table S1 ). The viruses could be classified into 21 discernible taxonomic entities on the level of putative species. No rubulaviruses were detected in rodents. A bat virus of high similarity to mumps virus was fully sequenced from a bat spleen (15, 378 nucleotides, (Supplementary Fig. S2) ). Amino acid similarity was well above 90% in all genes except P (89.5%), suggesting this virus and human mumps to be conspecific. To determine antigenic relatedness to human mumps virus, sera from 52 flying foxes and 78 insect-eating bats were tested by immunofluorescence (n = 26 Eidolon helvum, 5 Epomops franqueti, 5 Micropterus pusillus, 5 Myonycteris torquata, 11 Rousettus aegyptiacus, 14 Coleura afra, 21 Hipposideros cf. caffer, 11 Hipposideros gigas, 17 Miniopterus inflatus, 11 Rhinolophus cf. alcyone) . Clear reactivity was observed in 41.5% of the 130 tested bat sera (Fig. 4a) . Specificity of these reactivities was confirmed by cross-testing against other PVs, including the rubulavirus Parainfluenzavirus 2 (Fig. 4b) . These data in total suggest that mumps and related bat viruses may belong to one same serogroup.