title: Genomic Mining Reveals Deep Evolutionary Relationships between Bornaviruses and Bats.
abstract: Bats globally harbor viruses in order Mononegavirales, such as lyssaviruses and henipaviruses; however, little is known about their relationships with bornaviruses. Previous studies showed that viral fossils of bornaviral origin are embedded in the genomes of several mammalian species such as primates, indicative of an ancient origin of exogenous bornaviruses. In this study, we mined the available 10 bat genomes and recreated a clear evolutionary relationship of endogenous bornaviral elements and bats. Comparative genomics showed that endogenization of bornaviral elements frequently occurred in vesper bats, harboring EBLLs (endogenous bornavirus-like L elements) in their genomes. Molecular dating uncovered a continuous bornavirus-bat interaction spanning 70 million years. We conclude that better understanding of modern exogenous bornaviral circulation in bat populations is warranted.
authors.affiliation: Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore. jiecui@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.affiliation: Program in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, Singapore 169857, Singapore. linfa.wang@duke-nus.edu.sg.
authors.forename: Lin-Fa
authors.initials: LF
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D028981:Bornaviridae / Q000235:genetics*; D002685:Chiroptera / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D023281:Genomics
keywords: bats; endogenous bornaviruses; genomic mining; virus-host interaction