The Viruses of Wild Pigeon Droppings

Birds are frequent sources of emerging human infectious diseases. Viral particles were enriched from the feces of 51 wild urban pigeons (Columba livia) from Hong Kong and Hungary, their nucleic acids randomly amplified and then sequenced. We identified sequences from known and novel species from the viral families Circoviridae, Parvoviridae, Picornaviridae, Reoviridae, Adenovirus, Astroviridae, and Caliciviridae (listed in decreasing number of reads), as well as plant and insect viruses likely originating from consumed food. The near full genome of a new species of a proposed parvovirus genus provisionally called Aviparvovirus contained an unusually long middle ORF showing weak similarity to an ORF of unknown function from a fowl adenovirus. Picornaviruses found in both Asia and Europe that are distantly related to the turkey megrivirus and contained a highly divergent 2A1 region were named mesiviruses. All eleven segments of a novel rotavirus subgroup related to a chicken rotavirus in group G were sequenced and phylogenetically analyzed. This study provides an initial assessment of the enteric virome in the droppings of pigeons, a feral urban species with frequent human contact.鸟类是人类新发传染病的常见自然宿主来源。研究人员从中国香港与匈牙利的51只野生城市原鸽（Columba livia）的粪便中富集病毒颗粒，对其核酸进行随机扩增后完成测序。本研究鉴定出圆环病毒科（Circoviridae）、细小病毒科（Parvoviridae）、小RNA病毒科（Picornaviridae）、呼肠孤病毒科（Reoviridae）、腺病毒科（Adenoviridae）、星状病毒科（Astroviridae）以及杯状病毒科（Caliciviridae）（按测序读长数递减顺序排列）中已知病毒与新型病毒的序列，同时还发现了可能源自摄食食物的植物病毒与昆虫病毒。一种暂定归入禽细小病毒属（Aviparvovirus）的新型细小病毒物种的近乎完整基因组，包含一段异常长的中间开放阅读框（ORF），该阅读框与禽腺病毒中一段功能未知的开放阅读框仅存在微弱同源性。在亚洲与欧洲均检出的、与火鸡巨小RNA病毒（turkey megrivirus）亲缘关系较远且包含高度变异2A1区域的小RNA病毒，被命名为细质病毒（mesiviruses）。研究人员对一种与G组鸡轮状病毒亲缘关系较近的新型轮状病毒亚群的全部11个基因片段进行了测序与系统发育分析。本研究首次对与人类频繁接触的野生城市物种——鸽的粪便肠道病毒组（enteric virome）进行了初步评估。