The fecal virome of red-crowned cranes

• Published in: Archives of virology Vol. 164; no. 1; pp. 3 - 16
• Main Authors: Wang, Yan, Yang, Shixing, Liu, Dawei, Zhou, Chenglin, Li, Wang, Lin, Yuan, Wang, Xiaochun, Shen, Quan, Wang, Hua, Li, Chuang, Zong, Minghui, Ding, Yuzhu, Song, Qianben, Deng, Xutao, Qi, Dunwu, Zhang, Wen, Delwart, Eric
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vienna Springer Vienna 01-01-2019; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Animals; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Biomedicine; Birds - virology; Circular DNA; Feces - virology; Genome, Viral; Genomes; Infectious Diseases; Medical Microbiology; Metagenome; New genera; Nucleotide sequence; Original; Original Article; Outbreaks; Parvoviridae; Phylogeny; Picornaviridae; Polymerase Chain Reaction - methods; Polymerase Chain Reaction - veterinary; Virology; Viruses - classification; Viruses - genetics; Viruses - isolation & purification
• ISSN: 0304-8608; 1432-8798
• DOI: 10.1007/s00705-018-4037-x

The red-crowned crane is one of the rarest crane species, and its population is decreasing due to loss of habitat, poisoning, and infections. Using a viral metagenomics approach, we analyzed the virome of feces from wild and captive red-crowned cranes, which were pooled separately. Vertebrate viruses belonging to the families
Picornaviridae
,
Parvoviridae
,
Circoviridae
, and
Caliciviridae
were detected. Among the members of the family
Picornaviridae
, we found three that appear to represent new genera. Six nearly complete genomes from members of the family
Parvoviridae
were also obtained, including four new members of the proposed genus “
Chapparvovirus”
, and two members of the genus
Aveparvovirus
. Six small circular DNA genomes were also characterized. One nearly complete genome showing a low level of sequence identity to caliciviruses was also characterized. Numerous viruses believed to infect insects, plants, and crustaceans were also identified, which were probably derived from the diet of red-crowned cranes. This study increases our understanding of the enteric virome of red-crowned cranes and provides a baseline for comparison to those of other birds or following disease outbreaks.