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

While PCR and RT-PCR results showed that M. fuliginosus and R. ferrumequinum were the only species to harbor the selected viruses, this difference was possibly due to insufficient sampling of the other four bat species. The 2 positive bat species further showed differences in viral constitution with M. fuliginosus harboring Astv, Ifv, hepadnavirus and BoV, while R. ferrumequinum harbored Astv, CV, Adv and AVV, indicating the existence of coinfection with multiple viruses in both species. In addition, even the same species had a different viral constitution in different locations. For example, M. fuliginosus harbored astrovirus in Sedon, but not in Wutao; R. ferrumequinum harbored only CV in Sedon, but Astv, Adv and AVV in Wutao. These data show that bat virome varies among species and geo-locations, indicating that a complex viral ecology exists in the bat population. Similar differences in the bat virome have also been reported in previous studies [10, [35] [36] [37] , and therefore huge diversities in bat virome in the world can be expected.