Discovery of Novel Alphacoronaviruses in European Rodents and Shrews

Tsoleridis, Theocharis; Onianwa, Okechukwu; Horncastle, Emma; Dayman, Emma; Zhu, Miaoran; Danjittrong, Taechasit; Wachtl, Marta; Behnke, Jerzy M.; Chapman, Sarah; Strong, Victoria; Dobbs, Phillipa; Ball, Jonathan K.; Tarlinton, Rachael E.; McClure, C. Patrick

In total, 899 tissue samples from 813 wild rodents and shrews from the East Midlands region of the United Kingdom and the Mazury Lake District region of Poland ( Figure 1 , Table 1 ) were collected either as part of routine pest control, as a consequence of predation (Felis catus) or for other studies [11] . The samples from the United Kingdom were collected between 2008 and 2015 and the study was approved by the University of Nottingham Internal Ethics Committee (Nottingham, UK). The study for the Polish samples was approved by the Ethics Commission for Experiments on Animals of the M. Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warszawa, Poland). The rodent species included: house mouse (Mus musculus), brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), field vole (Microtus agrestis), bank vole (Myodes glareolus), wood mouse (Apodemus sylvaticus) and shrew (Sorexaraneus). A necropsy was performed and tissue samples were stored at´70˝C in ethanol (Polish liver specimens), at´70˝C in RNAlater (Sigma Aldrich, St. Louis, MO, USA; UK liver and gut specimens) or at´20˝C without additives (UK liver specimens collected in 2008). Total animals 813 Total samples 899 ‡ Two animals were positive in liver and gut, one animal was positive in the gut only and two animals had only a liver sample available.