Diversity of Coronaviruses in New World Bats

• Autor(a) principal: Simões, Bárbara dos Santos
• Data de Publicação: 2019
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/90337
• topic: Coronavirus; Bats; Evolution; Phylogeny; Coronavírus; Morcegos; Evolução; Filogenia; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Médicas

Coronaviruses comprise important human and animal pathogens. Six coronavirus species can cause human illness, probably all having a zoonotic origin. The prominent role of bats for coronavirus evolution was discovered in the aftermath of the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) outbreak, where bats were identified as the zoonotic origin of this virus and a great diversity of coronavirus was identified in bats around the world. Indeed, bats present the largest genetic diversity of coronavirus compared to other hosts, making them the major natural host. The Neotropical region harbours a high variety of bat species presenting enormous potential for coronavirus studies. However, most of the studies regarding coronavirus diversity were conducted in Old World bats. In this project, I studied the genetic diversity of coronavirus from about 1000 Neotropical bats. I conducted phylogenetic analyses from several coronavirus polymerase fragments and characterized two full genomes, comprising one alphacoronavirus from a Brazilian bat (Phyllostomus discolor) and one betacoronavirus from a Costa Rican bat (Pteronotus parnellii). The Phyllostomus bat alphacoronavirus might be an ancient relative of the human alphacoronaviruses 229E and NL63 and their bat-related coronaviruses. The Pteronotus bat betacoronavirus is an ancient sister clade of the clade c betacoronavirus to which the human coronavirus MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) belongs and might correspond to an ancient root of the origins of MERS. In sum, this thesis expands the knowledge of coronavirus diversity in New World bats as and gives a deeper insight into the origins of the human coronavirus MERS, 229E and NL63.