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Meta-Analysis
. 2023 Feb 9;13(1):2306.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-29099-6.

Detection of coronaviruses in insectivorous bats of Fore-Caucasus, 2021

Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Detection of coronaviruses in insectivorous bats of Fore-Caucasus, 2021

Igor V Popov et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Coronaviruses (CoVs) pose a huge threat to public health as emerging viruses. Bat-borne CoVs are especially unpredictable in their evolution due to some unique features of bat physiology boosting the rate of mutations in CoVs, which is already high by itself compared to other viruses. Among bats, a meta-analysis of overall CoVs epizootiology identified a nucleic acid observed prevalence of 9.8% (95% CI 8.7-10.9%). The main objectives of our study were to conduct a qPCR screening of CoVs' prevalence in the insectivorous bat population of Fore-Caucasus and perform their characterization based on the metagenomic NGS of samples with detected CoV RNA. According to the qPCR screening, CoV RNA was detected in 5 samples, resulting in a 3.33% (95% CI 1.1-7.6%) prevalence of CoVs in bats from these studied locations. BetaCoVs reads were identified in raw metagenomic NGS data, however, detailed characterization was not possible due to relatively low RNA concentration in samples. Our results correspond to other studies, although a lower prevalence in qPCR studies was observed compared to other regions and countries. Further studies should require deeper metagenomic NGS investigation, as a supplementary method, which will allow detailed CoV characterization.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Global positioning system (GPS) showing (A) probe locations in this study, and (B) locations, from where probes with detected CoV RNA were taken. (This map was created by QGIS version 3.28, which can be accessed on https://qgis.org/en/site/).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic tree built using 68 full reference genomes of CoV species and one reference genome of Edwardsiella virus pEt-SU (indicated by the NC-code from the NCBI RefSeq database). The rectangular heatmap represents the number of mismatches for forwards (F) and reverse (R) primers from Vijgen et al. (PrimeA), Lelli et al. (PrimeB), and Watanabe et al. (PrimeC) during in silico PCR testing.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Flow-chart representing conducted molecular studies.

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