Journal article
Discovery of novel papillomaviruses in the critically endangered Malayan and Chinese pangolins
- Abstract:
- Pangolins are scaly and toothless mammals which are distributed across Africa and Asia. Currently, the Malayan, Chinese and Philippine pangolins are designated as critically endangered species. Although few pangolin viruses have been described, their viromes have received more attention following the discovery that they harbour sarbecoviruses related to SARS-CoV-2. Using large-scale genome mining, we discovered novel lineages of papillomaviruses infecting the Malayan and Chinese pangolins. We were able to assemble three complete circular papillomavirus genomes with an intact coding capacity and five additional L1 genes encoding the major capsid protein. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that seven out of eight L1 sequences formed a monophyletic group which is the sister lineage to the Tupaia belangeri papillomavirus 1, isolated from Yunnan province in China. Additionally, a single L1 sequence assembled from a Chinese pangolin was placed in a clade closer to Alphapapillomavirus and Omegapapillomavirus. Examination of the SRA data from 95 re-sequenced genomes revealed that 49.3% of Malayan pangolins and 50% of Chinese pangolins were positive for papillomavirus reads. Our results indicate that pangolins in South-East Asia are the hosts of diverse and highly prevalent papillomaviruses, and highlight the value of in silico mining of host sequencing data for the discovery of novel viruses.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 788.7KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1098/rsbl.2022.0464
Authors
- Publisher:
- The Royal Society
- Journal:
- Biology Letters More from this journal
- Volume:
- 19
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 20220464
- Place of publication:
- England
- Publication date:
- 2023-01-04
- Acceptance date:
- 2022-11-28
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1744-957X
- ISSN:
-
1744-9561
- Pmid:
-
36596463
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- Pubs id:
-
1318131
- Local pid:
-
pubs:1318131
- Deposit date:
-
2023-03-03
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Nino Barreat et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © 2023 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record