RT Journal Article
T1 Comparative metagenomics of Palearctic and Neotropical avian cloacal viromes reveal geographic bias in virus discovery
A1 Truchado Martín, Daniel Alejandro
A1 Llanos Garrido, Alejandro
A1 Oropesa Olmedo, David A.
A1 Cerrada, Belén
A1 Cea, Pablo
A1 Moens, Michaël André Jean
A1 Gómez-Lucía Duato, María Esperanza
A1 Domenech Gómez, Ana María
A1 Milá, Borja
A1 Pérez Tris, Javier
A1 Cadar, Daniel
A1 Benítez Rico, Laura
AB Our understanding about viruses carried by wild animals is still scarce. The viral diversity of wildlife may be best described with discovery-driven approaches to the study of viral diversity that broaden research efforts towards non-canonical hosts and remote geographic regions. Birds have been key organisms in the transmission of viruses causing important diseases, and wild birds are threatened by viral spillovers associated with human activities. However, our knowledge of the avian virome may be biased towards poultry and highly pathogenic diseases. We describe and compare the fecal virome of two passerine-dominated bird assemblages sampled in a remote Neotropical rainforest in French Guiana (Nouragues Natural Reserve) and a Mediterranean forest in central Spain (La Herrería). We used metagenomic data to quantify the degree of functional and genetic novelty of viruses recovered by examining if the similarity of the contigs we obtained to reference sequences differed between both locations. In general, contigs from Nouragues were significantly less similar to viruses in databases than contigs from La Herrería using Blastn but not for Blastx, suggesting that pristine regions harbor a yet unknown viral diversity with genetically more singular viruses than more studied areas. Additionally, we describe putative novel viruses of the families Picornaviridae, Reoviridae and Hepeviridae. These results highlight the importance of wild animals and remote regions as sources of novel viruses that substantially broaden the current knowledge of the global diversity of viruses.
PB MDPI
SN Electronic: 2076-2607
YR 2020
FD 2020-11-26
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/7678
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/7678
LA eng
NO Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)/Fondo de Desarrollo Regional(FEDER)
NO Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ARN)
NO Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
DS Docta Complutense
RD 11 abr 2025