title: Bats and Rodents Shape Mammalian Retroviral Phylogeny.
abstract: Endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) represent past retroviral infections and accordingly can provide an ideal framework to infer virus-host interaction over their evolutionary history. In this study, we target high quality Pol sequences from 7,994 Class I and 8,119 Class II ERVs from 69 mammalian genomes and surprisingly find that retroviruses harbored by bats and rodents combined occupy the major phylogenetic diversity of both classes. By analyzing transmission patterns of 30 well-defined ERV clades, we corroborate the previously published observation that rodents are more competent as originators of mammalian retroviruses and reveal that bats are more capable of receiving retroviruses from non-bat mammalian origins. The powerful retroviral hosting ability of bats is further supported by a detailed analysis revealing that the novel bat gammaretrovirus, Rhinolophus ferrumequinum retrovirus, likely originated from tree shrews. Taken together, this study advances our understanding of host-shaped mammalian retroviral evolution in general.
authors.affiliation: Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Centre for Biomedical Research, Burnet Institute, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.|Department of Microbiology, Monash University, Clayton, Victoria, Australia.|Department of Infectious Diseases, Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.|Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: Gilda
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tachedjian
authors.affiliation: Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore, Singapore.
authors.forename: Lin-Fa
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology; D057225:Data Mining; D020077:Endogenous Retroviruses / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D016678:Genome; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods; D054884:Host-Pathogen Interactions; D006801:Humans; D008322:Mammals / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology; D010802:Phylogeny; D012192:Retroviridae Infections / Q000635:transmission; D012377:Rodentia / Q000235:genetics / Q000821:virology; D016415:Sequence Alignment