Study About Coronavirus And Japanese Encephalitis Virus Carried By Bats

Bats can harbor viruses including at least 10 families: Herpesviridae, Paramyxoviridae, Rhabdoviridae, Flavaviridae, Bunyaviridae, Togaviridae, et cetera. Many bat-related viruses are emerging infectious.Our research can be divided into two parts: 1) study about evolutionary relationships between bat coronaviruses (CoVs) and their hosts; 2) prevalent surveillance of Japanese encephalitis viruses (JEV) carried by bats.We find that there exists strong host dependence between CoV and their hosts. Their evolutionary relationships include coevolution and host shift. We examined the evolutionary relationships between bat CoVs and their hosts by using sequence dataof the virus RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene and the bat mitochondrial cytochrome b (Cyt b) gene. Phylogenetic analysis showed that multiple incongruent associations between the phylogenies of rhinolophus bats and their CoVs, which suggested that host shifts have occurred in the recent evolutionary history. These shifts may be due to either virus biologic traits or host behavioral traits. This finding has implications for the emergence of SARS and for the potential future emergence of SARS-CoV or related viruses.The other study shows that bats can be served as vectors carried JEVs. We used ELISA to screen bat sera for finding JEV-positive bats, and coupled with neutralization assays to confirm the ELISA results. Unfortunately, we did not find any JEV sequences using Real-Time PCR. Thus, the role of bats in viral circulation was still unknown. It was conjectured from the limited data that bats might play preserving roles during viral hibernation. We hypothesized that as natural hosts, bats transmitted JEV to other hosts like mosquito; or as intermediate hosts, bats hold JEV temporarily.