I know you were thinking the same thing! Bats are suspected reservoirs for several zoonotic viruses that can cause significant disease in humans or other animals. These include the dreaded Ebola virus, Nipah virus (which causes outbreaks of encephalitis in South East Asia), Hendravirus (which causes disease in horses) and several others. So knowing what viruses are carried by bats will be important in understanding emerging zoonoses.
Several studies have identified a diverse array of viruses in bats, but using next-generation sequencing it is now possible to investigate the population of viruses carried in bats to a much deeper level. In a study published last summer, guano from bats in California and Texas was collected by placing plastic sheets below the bat roosts. The individual roosts were occupied by as many as four different bat species, so the guano collected was a mix from the different inhabitants. To isolate viral DNA and RNA, the samples were filtered to remove cells then treated with nucleases to destroy any free DNA or RNA, leaving only encapsidated viral genetic material.
In the sequenced “virome” or population of viruses in the samples, only 51-39% of the sequences(depending on collection site) had matches to genbank sequences. So once again, viromic sequencing shows us how little we know about the viral world. Of those sequences that matched known sequences, most were insect and plant viruses. The bats are insectivores and the insects are herbivores, so you can see the viral populations from each link in the food chain. Only a very small proportion of the virome was of bacteriophage origin, much less than other viromic studies in humans and horses, although its not clear why there would be such a difference. Among mammalian viruses, which made up less thatn 10% of the sequences, there were adenoviruses, coronaviruses, parvoviruses, circoviruses, astrovirsues, picornaviruses and even poxviruses. Most of these sequences only matched less than 60% to known mammalian viruses however, so its unlikely that they pose a zoonotic threat.
As researchers continue to sequence viral populations, we keep seeing mostly novel sequences, something that has decreased in bacterial and eukaryotic sequencing. That tells us we have a lot more sequencing to do if we want to understand global viral diversity. In bats however, the major question is not so much about the diversity but the threat of zoonoses. It will be interesting to see the guanome of bats in areas where zoonoses are a real problem, and I wonder if this will be a technique useful to monitor the threat of emergent diseases as the cost of high throughput sequencing continues to drop.
