Identification of novel paramyxoviruses in insectivorous bats of the Southwest Indian Ocean.

David A Wilkinson (1, 2, 3, 4) , Sarah Temmam (2, 5, 1) , Camille Lebarbenchon (2, 3, 1) , Erwan Lagadec (2, 5, 6, 1) , Julien Chotte (2, 4, 1) , Julia Guillebaud (2, 4, 1) , Beza Ramasindrazana (7) , Jean-Michel Heraud (8) , Xavier de Lamballerie (9) , Steven M Goodman (7, 10) , Koussay Dellagi (2, 4, 1) , Hervé Pascalis (2, 4, 1)

1 CRVOI - Centre de Recherche et de Veille sur les Maladies Émergentes dans l'Océan Indien
2 CYROI - Cyclotron Réunion Océan Indien
3 UR - Université de La Réunion
4 IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement
5 LEM - Laboratoire d'Ecologie Microbienne - UMR 5557
6 UMR CMAEE - Contrôle des maladies animales exotiques et émergentes
7 Association Vahatra [Antananarivo, Madagascar]
8 Institut Pasteur de Madagascar
9 EPV - Emergence des Pathologies Virales
10 Field Museum of Natural History [Chicago, USA]

Bats are reservoirs for many emerging zoonotic viruses. In this study, we screened 197 animals from 15 different bat species of the Southwest Indian Ocean for paramyxovirus infection and identified paramyxoviruses in five insectivorous bat-species from the Union of the Comoros (3/66), Mauritius (1/55) and Madagascar (4/76). Viral isolation was possible via cell culture and phylogenetic analysis revealed these viruses clustered in a Morbillivirus-related lineage, with relatively high nucleotide sequence similarity to other recently discovered insectivorous-bat paramyxoviruses but distinct from those known to circulate in frugivorous bats.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]

David A Wilkinson, Sarah Temmam, Camille Lebarbenchon, Erwan Lagadec, Julien Chotte, et al.. Identification of novel paramyxoviruses in insectivorous bats of the Southwest Indian Ocean.. Virus Research, 2012, 170 (1-2), pp.159-63. ⟨10.1016/j.virusres.2012.08.022⟩. ⟨pasteur-00836609⟩