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.

The majority of all emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) arise from zoonotic pathogens (1), and bats are of significant interest as potential reservoir hosts for zoonotic viruses, including filoviruses, henipaviruses, coronaviruses, lyssaviruses, herpesviruses, and others (15, (39) (40) (41) (42) (43) (44) . Bats 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. Bats evolved roughly 50 million years ago and have diverged into 925 known species comprising 20% of all known mammal species. Several hypotheses have been put forth as to why bats are frequent reservoirs for emerging viruses, including their habitation in colonies; their existence as the only flying mammal, which might allow viral dissemination across a large geographic distance; and their long life spans relative to their body size (29, 45) . Testing these hypotheses will be facilitated by the availability of viruses that naturally infect bats. The cell line derived from Myotis velifer incautus is present in Texas and surrounding regions, consistent with the isolation of the tumor from Frio Cave in Texas (46) . Myotis lucifugus, a related species, is a predominant bat species across the majority of the United States and parts of Canada. To our knowledge, viruses isolated from M. velifer incautus bats are not described. Given the similarity to M. lucifugus, it is likely that these two species would harbor similar pathogens. The fact that this cell line is derived from a tumor is interesting, since tumors in bats are presumed to be rare and DNA repair proteins are highly expressed (29) . While our work validates the qPCR assay, future efforts to develop a serological assay to detect the virus's prevalence are desired.