Differential Evolution of Antiretroviral Restriction Factors in Pteropid Bats as Revealed by APOBEC3 Gene Complexity

Hayward, Joshua A; Tachedjian, Mary; Cui, Jie; Cheng, Adam Z; Johnson, Adam; Baker, Michelle L; Harris, Reuben S; Wang, Lin-Fa; Tachedjian, Gilda

Bats are reservoirs of emerging viruses that are highly pathogenic to other mammals including humans. In recent years, viruses such as Ebola, Marburg, Hendra, Nipah, Sosuga, and severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) have crossed species barriers from their natural hosts into humans (Calisher et al. 2006; Smith and Wang 2013; Amman et al. 2015; Hayman 2016) . Intriguingly, experimental infections have demonstrated that specific bat species can be infected with Ebola, Marburg, SARS-CoV, Hendra, and Nipah viruses without the development of clinical symptoms (Swanepoel et al. 1996; Williamson et al. 1998; Middleton et al. 2007; Watanabe et al. 2010; Jones et al. 2015) . This has led to efforts to uncover differences that might exist between the antiviral strategies of bats and other mammals Zhang et al. 2013; Zhou et al. 2016) .