Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Gammaherpesvirus from a Microbat Cell Line

Shabman, Reed S.; Shrivastava, Susmita; Tsibane, Tshidi; Attie, Oliver; Jayaprakash, Anitha; Mire, Chad E.; Dilley, Kari E.; Puri, Vinita; Stockwell, Timothy B.; Geisbert, Thomas W.; Sachidanandam, Ravi; Basler, Christopher F.

A majority of all emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) in humans arise from zoonotic pathogens (1) . Zoonotic viruses are harbored across animal species, but bats have drawn particular interest as potential sources of such pathogens. Bats comprise 20% of all known mammal species (2) and belong to the order Chiroptera, which is divided into two suborders, Megachiroptera (megabats), containing a single family, Pteropodidae, with 42 genera, and Microchiroptera (microbats), containing 16 families with 135 genera. Frequent associations of bat viruses with zoonotic viral diseases of humans and the fact that bats are described as hosts for a large variety of both DNA and RNA viruses suggest an unusual capacity to harbor viruses (reviewed in reference 3). However, a complete understanding of why bats can accommodate viruses that are often highly lethal in humans requires a more detailed characterization of bat-virus interactions than is currently available. Challenges to a more complete understanding of bat-virus interactions include the limited number of reagents such as readily available cell lines from diverse bat species, the absence of fully annotated genomes, limited reagents to characterize bat responses to infections, and a limited number of well-characterized viruses that naturally infect bats.