Magboi virus (MGBV) is a novel, bat-borne Orthohantavirus discovered in a Nycteridae trapped near the Magboi Stream in eastern Sierra Leone in 2011. It is a single-stranded, negative sense, RNA virus in the Bunyavirales order.[Weiss S, Witkowski PT, Auste B, Nowak K, Weber N, Fahr J, et al. Hantavirus in bat, Sierra Leone letter. Emerg Infect Dis serial. 2012 Jan][Jung YT, Kim GR. Genomic characterization of M and S RNA segments of hantaviruses isolated from bats. Acta Virol. 1995;39:231–3.][Charles Calisher, Childs JE, Field HE, Holmes KV, Schountz T. Bats: important reservoir hosts of emerging viruses. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2006;19:531–45.][Krüger DH, Schonrich G, Klempa B. Human pathogenic hantaviruses and prevention of infection. Hum Vaccin. 2011;7:685–93.]
Molecular virology
The discovery represented the first time a hantavirus was detected in a bat, although bats as a reservoir for hantavirus had been long suspected. On the basis of a maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree, the sequence isolated from the Magboi River bat does not cluster with rodent-associated hantaviruses but groups with those found in shrews and moles. This raises the question of the real hantavirus host range. Bats are
already known to harbor a broad variety of emerging pathogens, including other bunyaviruses. Their ability to fly and social life history enable efficient pathogen maintenance, evolution, and spread.
[Calisher CH, Childs JE, Field HE, Holmes KV, Schountz T Bats: important reservoir hosts of emerging viruses. Clin Microbiol Rev. 2006;19:531–45. doi: 10.1128/CMR.00017-06. PMC PubMed Cross][Murphy WJ, Eizirik E, Johnson WE, Zhang YP, Ryder OA, O’Brien SJ Molecular phylogenetics and the origins of placental mammals. Nature. 2001;409:614–8. doi: 10.1038/35054550. PubMed Cross]
See also
