Revista de filogenética y biología evolutiva

In Silico Characterisation of a Type D Betaretrovirus from Malayan Flying Fox, Pteropus vampyrus

Abstract

Roziah Kambol, Nur Fatin Aman Razlan Mahandran and Norfatimah M. Yunus

Bats are well known for their role as reservoirs of viral diseases. Previous studies have reported the presence of endogenous gamma and betaretrovirus in diverse species of bats. Here, we characterize one of these lineages- Pteropus vampyrus endogenous betaretrovirus namely PvEB in depth describing the genomic organization, age estimation and phylogenetic approaches to examine the origin and history of this virus. Phylogenetic analysis of gag, pol and full genome sequence has placed PvEB robustly within the betaretrovirus genus. Subsequently, PvEB was estimated to invade the bat genome since 1.5-8.8mya. The results of bioinformatics analysis were verified through amplification of the PvEB reverse transcriptase gene with the size of 700bp. With these findings together with the previous report, it is evident that PvEB is a member of type D betaretrovirus group.