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.

Initiated with the goal of characterizing the response of a microbat cell line to virus infection, the present study employed deep sequencing of bat cell mRNAs and serendipitously identified the presence of transcripts corresponding to a novel gammaherpesvirus. Follow-up studies demonstrated that the bat cell virus is released in a replication-competent form and can productively replicate in several nonhuman primate and human cell lines. Phylogenetic studies on this virus sequence suggest a bat origin for the new gammaherpesvirus. Although previous reports have described other gammaherpesvirus sequences from bats (16) (17) (18) , as well as a replication-competent bat betaherpesvirus (19) , the present study describes the first isolation of what is likely a bat gammaherpesvirus. The transcriptome data from the bat cell line also provide a transcript map for the novel gammaherpesvirus. Of note, novel open reading frames (ORFs) that likely function to regulate the bat immune responses appear to be expressed. Taken together, the gammaherpesvirus and microbat cell line provide a platform that will enable a greater understanding of both bat cell biology and innate immune regulatory mechanisms.