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

Based on the following combined observations for the Cameroonian PBV-like sequences P11-300, P11-378, P14-90, and P15-218: (1) a mitochondria like genetic code needed to translate the RdRp, (2) a potential absence of PBV-like capsid (after HMMER motif finder search; Eddy 2011), and (3) PCA analyses clustering them closely with mitoviruses, we speculate that these four PBVlike RdRp sequences might have a similar life style as mitoviruses, without an extracellular virion phase. However, it is not fully clear how to explain the observation that strain P16-366 uses an alternative genetic code, clusters with other sequences using the alternative code in the PCA analyses, and yet clusters with classical PBVs in the phylogenetic tree in genogroup II, and has a capsid sequence in the high-throughput sequencing data. Further analyses will have to shed light on this hypothesis.