Genetic Diversity of Bat Rotaviruses
Lurys Bourdett-Stanziola *
Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD), Panama and Secretaría Nacional de Ciencia Tecnología e Innovación (SENACYT), Panama and Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas (INDICASAT-AIP), Panama.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Rotaviruses are the most common cause of diarrhea in children and animals. Bats are considered reservoirs of many viruses with zoonotic impact worldwide. Rotaviruses have been detected in bats and many of those strains that have been identified globally share high homology with rotavirus strains identified in animals and humans, demonstrating that roles are being created in interspecies transmission and genetic rearrangement in a large number of occasions, which is producing rotavirus genetic diversity. The current effort to characterize strains of rotavirus in bats would help expand knowledge about the great genetic diversity of rotaviruses and could also suggest a bat origin for several unusual rotavirus strains detected in humans and animals. This is a review of the different strains of rotavirus that have been detected in bats globally, where bats have been identified as a possible zoonotic potential in the transmission of rotavirus to animals and humans; and possible anthropozoonosis events are revealed.
Keywords: Bats rotavirus, human rotavirus, genetic diversity, zoonosis