ИСТИНА

The majority of infectious diseases that were discovered during the last few decades are actually zooantroponosis. Bats are widely distributed in the world and recognized res- ervoirs of many emerging human infection viruses. Analysis of the virome of bats that are distributed in different geographical regions is an actual approach for identifying the new species of viruses that are potentially cause human infection disease. In addition, periodic monitoring of bats populations may provide important information for zoo- antroponosis control. Numerous studies have described viruses in different bat species from countries of Europe, Asia, Africa but no Russia. We characterized the fecal virome of 29 wild bats. Fecal samples were collected during 2015 in Moscow Region (Zvenigorod Biological Station, ZBS) from six species: Myotis dasycneme, Myotis daubentonii, Myotis brandtii, Nyctalus noctula, Pippistrellus nathu- sii, Plecotus auritus. Ectoparasite analysis of animals resulted in mites (24 samples) or mites and fleas (2 samples). The eight bats were healthy and the three animals were not examinated. We used PCR assay targeted on Astroviridae, Coronaviridae, Herpesvirus, Lyssavirus I, Lyssavirus II, Caliciviridae (nairovirus), Filoviridae, arenavirus, rotavi- rus, paramyxovirus. High throughput sequencing analysis was performed using Illumina MiSeq. Data analysis was conducted as described in study Dedkov et al., 2016. The results revealed that 13 of 29 analyzed bats (45%) contained coronaviruses. After the SARS epidemic (a few years ago) some studies enabled hypotheses of bats as reser- voir hosts of coronaviruses. It was demonstrated that 6 of the 15 recognized coronavirus species were only found in bats. In this work, we found that five of six investigated bat species are hosts of different strains similar to known coronaviruses (including porcine epidemic diarrhea virus). The only P. auritus (single sample) was free from coronavi- ruses. Our results demonstrated that ZBS populations of bats are abundant reservoir of coronaviruses. We also confirmed other viruses that had previously been reported in different bat spe- cies from other regions: astroviruses were found in M. dasycneme and M. daubentonii. The members of herpesvirus and cypovirus genera were detected in P. nathusii and M. brandtii respectively. The twelve animals were healfy. Our result revealed the partial genome sequences of two new novel mammalian viruses. The few sequence reads of virome from M. daubentonii showed similarities to Ippy mammarenavirus (51% protein identity). Another new virus demonstrated ~71-78% pro- tein identity to rhabdovirus. Our work provides the first report about the bat viromes in Russia. It should help under- standing of the viruses communities present in bat species found near human habitats.