Journal of Infectious Diseases & Therapy
Open Access

Abstract

Despite the fact that bats are reservoir hosts of numerous viruses with zoonotic potential, the presence of the Picornaviridae family members in these flying mammals remains little known, however they may have the potential to cross species barriers. Picornaviruses are non-enveloped small positive sense-single stranded-RNA viruses, which evolve very fast: 80 species are counted to date. In order to be prepared to face newly emerging viral diseases our knowledge about the viruses circulating in animals of high zoonotic potential, is highly important in order to rapidly detect zoonotic spillovers. For this purpose, we accomplished co-phylogenetic analyses of hostâ��virus relationship on Miniopterus schreibersii bat guano samples collected in Algeria in 2017, through both metagenomic and phylogenetic analyses. In this study, we report the first molecular data and genomic characterization of a novel picornavirus from the bat species M. schreibersii in Algeria. Phylogenetic analyses showed that this novel picornavirus belongs to Mischivirus genus and is closely related to Mischivirus B, also within the Mischivirus group there is no host jumping phenomenon observed comparing to other members of Picornaviruses. References : 1. Alexander N Lukashev, Victor Max Corman, Daniel Schacht, Florian Gloza-Rausch, Antje Seebens-Hoyer, Anatoly P Gmyl, Christian Dorsten and Jan Felix Drexler (2017) Close genetic relatedness of picornaviruses from European and Asian bats. Journal of General Virology 98:955-961. 2. Claude Kwe Yinda, Roland Zell, Ward Deboutte, Mark Zeller, N�¡dia Concei�§�£o-Neto, Elisabeth Heylen, Piet Maes, Nick J. Knowles, Stephen Mbigha Ghogomu, Marc Van Ranst and Jelle Matthijnssens (2017) Highly diverse population of Picornaviridae and other members of the Picornavirales in Cameroonian fruit bats. BMC Genomics 18:249. 3. David T S Hayman (2016) Bats as viral reservoirs. Annual Review of Virology 3:77-99. 4. Gabor Kemenesi, Dabing Zhang, Szilvia Marton, Bianka Dallos, Tamas Gorfo, Peter Estok, SandorBoldogh, Korne lia Kurucz, Miklos Oldal, Anna Kutas, Krisztian Banyai and Ferenc Jakab (2015) Genetic characterization of a novel picornavirus detected in Miniopterus schreibersii bats. Journal of General Virology 96:815-822. 5. Patrick C Y Woo, Susanna K P Lau, Garnet K Y Choi, Yi Huang, Saritha Sivakumar, Hoi-WahTsoi, Cyril C Y Yip, Shanty V Jose, Ru Bai, Emily Y M Wong, Marina Josephf, Tong Li, Ulrich Wernery and Kwok-YungYuen (2016) Molecular epidemiology of canine picornavirus in Hong Kong and Dubai and proposal of a novel genus in Picornaviridae. Infection, Genetics and Evolution 41:191-200

Biography

Zeghbib Safia is a PhD student at University of Pécs in the virological research group. She completed her MSc in Genetics from U.S.T.H.B University in Algeria. She worked as a medical representative for three years, then joined Pasteur institute in Tunisia for six months where she worked on congenital deafness, after that she had been awarded a Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship and started her work on zoonosis in Algeria.
Email:zeghbib.safia@gmail.com