Đakrông virus, a novel mobatvirus (Hantaviridae) harbored by the Stoliczka’s Asian trident bat (Aselliscus stoliczkanus) in Vietnam

Abstract

The recent discovery of genetically distinct shrew- and mole-borne viruses belonging to the newly defined family Hantaviridae (order Bunyavirales) has spurred an extended search for hantaviruses in RNAlater®-preserved lung tissues from 215 bats (order Chiroptera) representing five families (Hipposideridae, Megadermatidae, Pteropodidae, Rhinolophidae and Vespertilionidae), collected in Vietnam during 2012 to 2014. A newly identified hantavirus, designated Đakrông virus (DKGV), was detected in one of two Stoliczka’s Asian trident bats (Aselliscus stoliczkanus), from Đakrông Nature Reserve in Quảng Trị Province. Using maximum-likelihood and Bayesian methods, phylogenetic trees based on the full-length S, M and L segments showed that DKGV occupied a basal position with other mobatviruses, suggesting that primordial hantaviruses may have been hosted by ancestral bats.