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. 2022 Jun 1;14(6):1205.
doi: 10.3390/v14061205.

Discovery of a Novel Coronavirus in Swedish Bank Voles (Myodes glareolus)

Anishia Wasberg  1 , Jayna Raghwani  2 , Jinlin Li  3 , John H-O Pettersson  1   4 , Johanna F Lindahl  1   5   6 , Åke Lundkvist  1 , Jiaxin Ling  1
Affiliations

Discovery of a Novel Coronavirus in Swedish Bank Voles (Myodes glareolus)

Anishia Wasberg et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

The unprecedented pandemic COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), with bats as original reservoirs, has once again highlighted the importance of exploring the interface of wildlife diseases and human health. In this study, we identified a novel Betacoronavirus from bank voles (Myodes glareolus) in Grimsö, Sweden, and this virus is designated as Grimso virus. Repeated detection over three years and an overall prevalence of 3.4% suggest that the virus commonly occurs in bank voles. Furthermore, phylogenetic analyses indicate that the Grimso virus belongs to a highly divergent Embecovirus lineage predominantly associated with bank voles. Given that bank voles are one of the most common rodent species in Sweden and Europe, our findings indicate that Grimso virus might be circulating widely in bank voles and further point out the importance of sentinel surveillance of coronaviruses in wild small mammalian animals, especially in wild rodents.

Keywords: RNA-sequencing; bank voles; coronavirus; prevalence.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(A) Geographic map showing the province Örebro, Sweden and the site of sampling (Grimsö) where bank voles were captured. Table demonstrating the prevalence of Grimso virus from 2015 to 2017. (B) MrBayes midpoint root tree based on the 252 nt of the spike gene. The scale bar indicates the nt substitution per site. The numbers above the branches indicate the posterior probability. Grimso virus samples are highlighted in blue.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(A) Genomic RNA and subgenomic mRNAs organizations of Grimso virus, Grimso215 strain. MrBayes trees based on the complete nucleotide sequences (B) and amino acid sequences (C) of ORF1b, S, and N genes of CoVs. The red color shows Grimso virus. The scale bar indicates the nt and aa substitution per site, respectively. The numbers above the branches indicate the posterior probability.
Figure 3
Figure 3
MrBayes tree based on 441nt of partial RdRp gene of CoVs. (A) Phylogeny of alphacoronaviruses and (B) betacoronaviruses. The red color shows CoVs carried by bank voles across Europe. The scale bar indicates the nt substitution per site. The numbers above the branches indicate the posterior probability.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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