Viruses . SARS-like Coronaviruses in Horseshoe Bats ( Rhinolophus spp.) in Russia, 2020

[tetano]

Viruses


. 2022 Jan 9;14(1):113.
doi: 10.3390/v14010113.
SARS-like Coronaviruses in Horseshoe Bats ( Rhinolophus spp.) in Russia, 2020


Sergey Alkhovsky ^{1 2} , Sergey Lenshin ³ , Alexey Romashin ⁴ , Tatyana Vishnevskaya ^{1 2} , Oleg Vyshemirsky ³ , Yulia Bulycheva ¹ , Dmitry Lvov ¹ , Asya Gitelman ^{1 2}



Affiliations

• PMID: 35062318
• DOI: 10.3390/v14010113

Abstract

We found and genetically described two novel SARS-like coronaviruses in feces and oral swabs of the greater (R. ferrumequinum) and the lesser (R. hipposideros) horseshoe bats in southern regions of Russia. The viruses, named Khosta-1 and Khosta-2, together with related viruses from Bulgaria and Kenya, form a separate phylogenetic lineage. We found evidence of recombination events in the evolutionary history of Khosta-1, which involved the acquisition of the structural proteins S, E, and M, as well as the nonstructural genes ORF3, ORF6, ORF7a, and ORF7b, from a virus that is related to the Kenyan isolate BtKY72. The examination of bats by RT-PCR revealed that 62.5% of the greater horseshoe bats in one of the caves were positive for Khosta-1 virus, while its overall prevalence was 14%. The prevalence of Khosta-2 was 1.75%. Our results show that SARS-like coronaviruses circulate in horseshoe bats in the region, and we provide new data on their genetic diversity.

Keywords: Rhinolophus; SARS-CoV; SARS-CoV-2; SARS-CoV-like viruses; bat SARS-like coronaviruses; coronavirus; horseshoe bats; viral metagenomics; zoonotic viruses.