Authors
Jonathan H Epstein, Phenix-Lan Quan, Thomas Briese, Craig Street, Omar Jabado, Sean Conlan, Shahneaz Ali Khan, Dawn Verdugo, M Jahangir Hossain, Stephen K Hutchison, Michael Egholm, Stephen P Luby, Peter Daszak, W Ian Lipkin
Publication date
2010/7/1
Journal
PLoS pathogens
Volume
6
Issue
7
Pages
e1000972
Publisher
Public Library of Science
Description
Bats are reservoirs for a wide range of zoonotic agents including lyssa-, henipah-, SARS-like corona-, Marburg-, Ebola-, and astroviruses. In an effort to survey for the presence of other infectious agents, known and unknown, we screened sera from 16 Pteropus giganteus bats from Faridpur, Bangladesh, using high-throughput pyrosequencing. Sequence analyses indicated the presence of a previously undescribed virus that has approximately 50% identity at the amino acid level to GB virus A and C (GBV-A and -C). Viral nucleic acid was present in 5 of 98 sera (5%) from a single colony of free-ranging bats. Infection was not associated with evidence of hepatitis or hepatic dysfunction. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that this first GBV-like flavivirus reported in bats constitutes a distinct species within the Flaviviridae family and is ancestral to the GBV-A and -C virus clades.
Total citations
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