Viral Metagenomics Research Of Tree Shrew

Most of the new infectious diseases in humans are caused by pathogens transmitted from animals to humans.Pathogens that cause high outbreaks and pandemics of infectious diseases in the population often lead to little or no clinical symptoms of infection in their natural hosts,and when such pathogens spread to humans,they will cause a huge impact on human health and the global economy.Therefore,efforts to reveal the diversity of pathogens carried by important natural hosts,and to elucidate new pathogens with potential important influence in public health,can provide direct scientific data support for the prevention of emerging infectious diseases.Tree shrews have special phylogenetic position.Previous studies have shown that tree shrews are the host of multiple viruses,such as,herpes simplex virus,coxsackievirus,papillomavirus and so on.However,the virus diversity carried by the tree shrews is still not fully revealed.This study investigated the diversity of viruses carried by Chinese tree shrews through the viral metagenomics method.6 different visceral tissue samples and throat and rectal swab samples were surveyed by viral metagenomics with high-throughput sequencing,and found viruses of 56 viral families,including 30 families of animal viruses.The results showed that the virus diversity of tree shrews was high,contains a variety of important animal virus pathogens.Epidemiological surveys of viruses in seven different viral families were conducted using PCR testing,and the results showed that parvovirus,adenovirus,torque teno virus,hepacivirus,hepatitis E virus,paraxomyvirus,pneumovirus are common in the tree,and most of them were new virus.Then we conducted the whole genome sequence identification and genetic analysis of some virus strains and found that one of the pneumonia virus has a very high similarity with the swine pneumonia virus.The whole genome nucleotide similarity of them is 98.451%,and they have a closer differentiation time,suggesting that the virus between the two hosts may have cross-species transmission.Our results indicate that Chinese tree shrews carry diverse viruses and it is necessary to strengthen the investigation of tree shrew virus.