Recent studies in several African countries have provided the first evidence for the presence of coronaviruses in African bats. Here we describe, for the first time, the detection of RNA of 3 unique coronavirus species in the tissues of South African bats.
DrexlerJF, Gloza-RauschF, GlendeJ, CormanVMet al.Genomic characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus in European bats and classification of coronaviruses based on partial RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene sequences. J Virol, 2010; 84:11336–11349.
3.
HallTA. BioEdit: A user-friendly biological sequence alignment editor and analysis program for Windows 95/98/NT. Nucl Acids Symp Ser, 1999; 41:95–98.
4.
LauSK, WooPC, LiKS, HuangYet al.Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-like virus in Chinese horseshoe bats. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2005; 102:14040–14045.
5.
MüllerMA, PaweskaJT, LemanPA, DrostenCet al.Coronavirus antibodies in African bat species. Emerg Infect Dis, 2007; 13:1367–1370.
6.
PfefferleS, OppongS, DrexlerJF, Gloza-RauschFet al.Distant relatives of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus and close relatives of human coronavirus 229E in bats, Ghana. Emerg Infect Dis, 2009; 15:1377–1384.
7.
PoonLL, ChuDK, ChanKH, WongOKet al.Identification of a novel coronavirus in bats. J Virol, 2005; 79:2001–2009.
8.
QuanP, FirthC, StreetC, HenriquezJA, PetrosovAet al.Identification of a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-like virus in a leaf-nosed bat in Nigeria. mBio, 2010; 1:1–9.
9.
ReuskenCB, LinaPCH, PielaatA, de VriesAet al.Circulation of group 2 coronaviruses in a bat Species common to urban areas in western Europe. Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis, 2010; 10,1–8:785–791.
10.
TamuraK, PetersonD, PetersonN, StecherGet al.MEGA5: Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary distance, and maximum parsimony methods. Mol Biol Evol, 2011; 28:2731–2739.
11.
TongS, ConrardyC, RuoneS, KuzminIVet al.Detection of novel SARS-like and other coronaviruses in bats from Kenya. Emerg Infect Dis, 2009; 15:482–485.
12.
WooPCW, LauSKP, ChuC, ChanKet al.Characterization and complete genome sequence of a novel coronavirus, coronavirus HKU1, from patients with pneumonia. J Virol, 2005; 79:884–895.