Virome Profiling of Bats from Myanmar by Metagenomic Analysis of Tissue Samples Reveals More Novel Mammalian Viruses

He, Biao; Li, Zuosheng; Yang, Fanli; Zheng, Junfeng; Feng, Ye; Guo, Huancheng; Li, Yingying; Wang, Yiyin; Su, Nan; Zhang, Fuqiang; Fan, Quanshui; Tu, Changchun

Bats, comprising the second largest mammalian population in the world and distributed globally with the exception of the two polar areas, belong to the order Chiroptera with 17 families and 925 species [1] . Bats are important virus reservoir animals and more than 60 viruses have been identified in them with many highly pathogenic to humans [2] , including henipaviruses, Ebola virus, Marburg virus, dengue virus, lyssaviruses and SARS-like coronavirus [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] . Most recently, Bokeloh and Shimoni bat viruses, circovirus, bocavirus, retrovirus, astrovirus, and Cedar virus have been identified as new bat viruses with some never having been reported in other animals, suggesting that bats could be a large virus bank and breeding ground for viruses [4, [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] . In China, viruses are increasingly being detected in, or isolated from bats, such as coronavirus, circovirus, astrovirus, Xi River virus, Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV), Chikungunya virus, Tuhoko virus, picornavirus, adeno-associated virus and adenovirus [5, 9, 14, [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] . Notably, SARS coronavirus, which has infected more than 8,000 people and killed almost 800 worldwide, has been identified as likely originating from horseshoe bats in China [5, 23, 24] . However, all available studies so far fail to provide a complete understanding of the pathogen ecology of bat populations.