Abstract
Bats are connected with the increasing numbers of emerging and re-emerging viruses that may break the species barrier and spread into the human population. Coronaviruses are one of the most common viruses discovered in bats, which were considered as the natural source of recent human-susceptible coronaviruses, i.e. SARS-COV and MERS-CoV. Our previous study reported the discovery of a bat-derived putative cross-family recombinant coronavirus with a reovirus gene p10, named as Ro-BatCoV GCCDC1. In this report, through a two-year follow-up of a special bat population in one specific cave of south China, we illustrate that Ro-BatCoV GCCDC1 persistently circulates among bats. Notably, through the longitudinal observation, we identified the dynamic evolution of Ro-BatCoV GCCDC1 in bats represented by continuously recombination events. Our study provides the first glimpse of the virus evolution in one longitudinally observed bat population cohort and underlines the surveillance and pre-warning of potential interspecies transmittable viruses in bats.
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Acknowledgements
We appreciate the great efforts of Drs. Yongming Zhou, Honghua Wen, Huaxing Liu, who participated in the collection of the bat samples. This work was supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1200202), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81290342, 81461168030), the Major Special Projects for Infectious Disease Research of China (2016ZX10004222-003), and China National Grand S&T Special Project (2014ZX10004-001-006). Joseph O. Obameso was supported by CAS-TWAS President’s Fellowship of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS) and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). George F. Gao is a leading principle investigator of the NSFC Innovative Research Group (81621091). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Obameso, J.O., Li, H., Jia, H. et al. The persistent prevalence and evolution of cross-family recombinant coronavirus GCCDC1 among a bat population: a two-year follow-up. Sci. China Life Sci. 60, 1357–1363 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9263-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-017-9263-6