Two Novel Parvoviruses in Frugivorous New and Old World Bats

Canuti, Marta; Eis-Huebinger, Anna Maria; Deijs, Martin; de Vries, Michel; Drexler, Jan Felix; Oppong, Samuel K.; Müller, Marcel A.; Klose, Stefan M.; Wellinghausen, Nele; Cottontail, Veronika M.; Kalko, Elisabeth K. V.; Drosten, Christian; van der Hoek, Lia

VIDISCA is a virus discovery technique that can identify RNA and DNA viruses, without prior knowledge of its genome sequence. The technique was successfully used to discover human coronavirus NL63 [36] . Nowadays, VIDISCA is combined with second generation sequencing techniques and the method allows identification of viruses in clinical samples [22] . In search for previously unknown bat parvoviruses we combined VIDISCA with Roche-454 sequencing and generated high amounts of sequence reads from pools of bat blood derived from various bat species originating from Ghana and Panama (in total 227931 reads). In one pool of 2 serum samples collected from frugivorous Eidelon helvum bats from Ghana and in one pool of 50 EDTA blood samples collected from frugivorous Artibeus jamaicensis bats from Panama 136 parvoviral hits (0.65% of the Eidelon helvum bat reads, resulting in 15 different fragments) and 168 parvoviral hits (2.4% of the Artibeus jamaicensis bat reads, resulting in 22 different fragments) were identified. Respectively 42.5% and 52.5% of the complete genome were obtained with VIDISCA-454.