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Updated: Oct 5, 2025

Pan-lyssavirus Real Time RT-PCR for Rabies Diagnosis
Published on: July 10, 2019
SARS-like Coronaviruses in Horseshoe Bats (Rhinolophus spp.) in Russia, 2020
Sergey Alkhovsky1,2, Sergey Lenshin3, Alexey Romashin4
1D.I. Ivanovsky Institute of Virology of N.F. Gamleya National Center for Epidemiology and Microbiology of Ministry of Health of Russian Federation, 18 Gamaleya Street, 123098 Moscow, Russia.
Abstract:
We found and genetically described two novel SARS-like coronaviruses in feces and oral swabs of the greater (R. ferrumequinum) and the lesser (R. hipposideros) horseshoe bats in southern regions of Russia. The viruses, named Khosta-1 and Khosta-2, together with related viruses from Bulgaria and Kenya, form a separate phylogenetic lineage. We found evidence of recombination events in the evolutionary history of Khosta-1, which involved the acquisition of the structural proteins S, E, and M, as well as the nonstructural genes ORF3, ORF6, ORF7a, and ORF7b, from a virus that is related to the Kenyan isolate BtKY72. The examination of bats by RT-PCR revealed that 62.5% of the greater horseshoe bats in one of the caves were positive for Khosta-1 virus, while its overall prevalence was 14%. The prevalence of Khosta-2 was 1.75%. Our results show that SARS-like coronaviruses circulate in horseshoe bats in the region, and we provide new data on their genetic diversity.
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