■蝙蝠是生态系统服务的重要提供者,例如授粉,种子传播,和昆虫控制,但也是致命的人畜共患病毒的天然宿主。蝙蝠拥有多种病毒,这些病毒在其他动物和人类中引起危及生命的病理,但是,自己,从感染中经历有限的病理疾病。尽管蝙蝠作为几种人畜共患病毒的水库很重要,我们对它们所承载的更广泛的病毒多样性知之甚少。蝙蝠病毒监测工作受到现场捕获困难以及基于PCR或ELISA的靶向分子和血清学检测范围有限的挑战。此外,病毒脱落通常是短暂的,因此也限制了从现场标本的核酸测试中获得的见解。噬菌体免疫沉淀测序(PhIP-Seq),一种广泛的血清学工具,以前用于全面描述人类的病毒暴露史,为野生动物的病毒监测工作提供了令人兴奋的前景,包括蝙蝠。
■这里,第一次,我们将PhIP-Seq技术应用于蝙蝠血清,使用最初设计用于同时测定暴露于整个人类病毒的病毒肽文库。
■使用VirScan,我们确定了过去对57个病毒属的暴露,包括锥虫病病毒,乙肝病毒,Lyssavirus,和丝状病毒-在半圈养的翼龙和圈养的Eonycterisspelaea中的九个病毒属中。与人类的结果一致,我们发现,总的肽命中(在我们的文库中富集的病毒肽的数量)和相应的推断过去的病毒暴露在蝙蝠宿主中的数量与蝙蝠的身体状态得分相关,并随着年龄的增长而增加。高和低的身体状况评分与不同病毒的血清阳性或血清阴性状态相关。虽然总的来说,病毒特异性年龄-血清阳性率曲线无视终生免疫感染的假设,这表明许多蝙蝠病毒可能通过复杂的传播动力学传播。
■总的来说,我们的工作强调应用生物医学工具的效用,像PhIP-Seq,首先为人类开发的野生动物病毒监测工作,同时强调了特定于分类单元的改进机会。
Bats are important providers of ecosystem services such as pollination, seed dispersal, and insect control but also act as natural reservoirs for virulent zoonotic viruses. Bats host multiple viruses that cause life-threatening pathology in other animals and humans but, themselves, experience limited pathological disease from infection. Despite bats\' importance as reservoirs for several zoonotic viruses, we know little about the broader viral diversity that they host. Bat virus surveillance efforts are challenged by difficulties of field capture and the limited scope of targeted PCR- or ELISA-based molecular and serological detection. Additionally, virus shedding is often transient, thus also limiting insights gained from nucleic acid testing of field specimens. Phage ImmunoPrecipitation Sequencing (PhIP-Seq), a broad serological tool used previously to comprehensively profile viral exposure history in humans, offers an exciting prospect for viral surveillance efforts in wildlife, including bats.
Here, for the first time, we apply PhIP-Seq technology to bat serum, using a viral peptide library originally designed to simultaneously assay exposures to the entire human virome.
Using VirScan, we identified past exposures to 57 viral genera-including betacoronaviruses, henipaviruses, lyssaviruses, and filoviruses-in semi-captive Pteropus alecto and to nine viral genera in captive Eonycteris spelaea. Consistent with results from humans, we find that both total peptide hits (the number of enriched viral peptides in our library) and the corresponding number of inferred past virus exposures in bat hosts were correlated with poor bat body condition scores and increased with age. High and low body condition scores were associated with either seropositive or seronegative status for different viruses, though in general, virus-specific age-seroprevalence curves defied assumptions of lifelong immunizing infection, suggesting that many bat viruses may circulate via complex transmission dynamics.
Overall, our work emphasizes the utility of applying biomedical tools, like PhIP-Seq, first developed for humans to viral surveillance efforts in wildlife, while highlighting opportunities for taxon-specific improvements.