Haunted with and hunting for viruses

Gao, George Fu; Wu, Ying

Shi [15] reviewed recent discoveries of new viruses or virus genomes from bat. Bat is believed to harbor many more viruses than we ever thought as a reservoir host or even a susceptible host [16] . After the SARS-CoV virus, we have been actively seeking for new coronaviruses from bat and have yielded many of them, including potential human infecting HKU-1, 4, 5 and 9 [17, 18] . Recent MERS-CoV infection is another example for severe disease caused by used-to-be-less pathogenic coronaviruses. Shi and colleagues [19] by using NGS have discovered many unknown animal viruses from bat, especially some important paramyxoviruses and reoviruses. Filovirus has also been identified in bat with potential severe outcomes. Lyssaviruses (with many genotypes, including rabies virus) in the Rhabdoviridae family have been linked with severe fatal human cases, even in the developed countries, including Australia, with the bites of bats in the city [20, 21] . The potential roles of these viruses in bats for interspecies transmission are yet to be elucidated.