Coronaviruses and Mammarenoviruses in hedgehogs from Russia

In the present study, we performed high-throughput sequencing of metavirome from hedgehogs captured in 2022 - 2023 in different regions of Russia, from the South-West to the central European part and Siberia. Given that hedgehogs carry several viruses, they may be hosts to viruses and infections that can cross the inter-species barrier and become dangerous to humans and other mammals. It is noteworthy that large parts of the diversity of hedgehog viruses are still uncharacterized. The focus of discovery efforts has been on virus families with known zoonotic potential.At present, no sequence data was available on the viral genomes of hedgehogs living in the territory of the Russian Federation. The aim of this study is to identify viral diversity in hedgehogs from different geographically distant regions of Russia using high-throughput sequencing methods and to describe the most important zoonotically significant viruses.