Cameroonian fruit bats harbor divergent viruses, including rotavirus H, bastroviruses, and picobirnaviruses using an alternative genetic code

Yinda, Claude Kwe; Ghogomu, Stephen Mbigha; Conceição-Neto, Nádia; Beller, Leen; Deboutte, Ward; Vanhulle, Emiel; Maes, Piet; Van Ranst, Marc; Matthijnssens, Jelle

For several viruses, there seems to be a taxon (species or genus)-specific host restriction. For bat CoVs, a single epidemiological unit of continental populations of E. helvum seems to exist (Gloza-Rausch et al. 2008; Peel et al. 2013; Razanajatovo et al. 2015) . Also, the parvovirus strain BtPV/CAM/2004 is genetically related to a Ghanaian E. helvum strain and a similar observations was made for RVA, where a RVA strain from Cameroonian E. helvum bat was related to a known Kenyan strain (Yinda et al. 2016b ). However, the presence of the novel E. helvum CoV strain CMR66 in an exclusively Rousettus spp. clade ( Supplementary Fig. S4 ) shows an example of interspecies transmission between bat species. Such occasional interspecies events either within the Chiropteran order or to other orders, account for emerging viral zoonotic outbreaks like SARS and MERS (Tao et al. 2017) . This is particularly easy in regions where there is close proximity between human and bats as is the case in the Southwest Region of Cameroon (Mickleburgh et al. 2009 ).