Detection of Recombinant Rousettus Bat Coronavirus GCCDC1 in Lesser Dawn Bats (<i>Eonycteris spelaea</i>) in Singapore

• Main Authors: Adrian C. Paskey, Justin H. J. Ng, Gregory K. Rice, Wan Ni Chia, Casandra W. Philipson, Randy J. H. Foo, Regina Z. Cer, Kyle A. Long, Matthew R. Lueder, Xiao Fang Lim, Kenneth G. Frey, Theron Hamilton, Danielle E. Anderson, Eric D. Laing, Ian H. Mendenhall, Gavin J. Smith, Lin-Fa Wang, Kimberly A. Bishop-Lilly
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-05-01
• Series: Viruses
• Subjects: lesser dawn bat; Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1; recombinant; coronavirus
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/12/5/539

Rousettus bat coronavirus GCCDC1 (RoBat-CoV GCCDC1) is a cross-family recombinant coronavirus that has previously only been reported in wild-caught bats in Yúnnan, China. We report the persistence of a related strain in a captive colony of lesser dawn bats captured in Singapore. Genomic evidence of the virus was detected using targeted enrichment sequencing, and further investigated using deeper, unbiased high throughput sequencing. RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 Singapore shared 96.52% similarity with RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 356 (NC_030886) at the nucleotide level, and had a high prevalence in the captive bat colony. It was detected at five out of six sampling time points across the course of 18 months. A partial segment 1 from an ancestral Pteropine orthoreovirus, p10, makes up the recombinant portion of the virus, which shares high similarity with previously reported RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 strains that were detected in Yúnnan, China. RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 is an intriguing, cross-family recombinant virus, with a geographical range that expands farther than was previously known. The discovery of RoBat-CoV GCCDC1 in Singapore indicates that this recombinant coronavirus exists in a broad geographical range, and can persist in bat colonies long-term.