Twenty-four bat coronaviruses identifed by metatranscriptomic sequencing

We described a meta-transcriptomic study of 411 samples from various bats collected from Yunnan province from May 2019 to November 2020. 24 full-length genomes of coronaviruses were identified, including four novel SARS-CoV-2 and three SARS-CoV related genomes. RpYN379 exhibited 94.5% sequence identity to SARS-CoV-2 at the scale to whole genome and shared the highest sequence identity with SARS-CoV-2 in most of the genome. The other three SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses were nearly identical clustered together with the Pangolin/Guangxi coronavirus lineage. 17 alphacoronavirus genomes were also identified, some of which might represent novel species.