A Search for Tick-Associated, Bronnoya-like Virus Spillover into Sheep

Bianca Elena Bratuleanu (1, 2) , Cristian Raileanu (2) , Delphine Chrétien (1, 3) , Pablo Guardado-Calvo (4) , Thomas Bigot (5) , Gheorghe Savuta (2) , Sarah Temmam (1, 3) , Marc Eloit (1, 3, 6)

1 Découverte de pathogènes – Pathogen discovery
2 Universitatea de Ştiinţe Agricole şi Medicină Veterinară "Ion Ionescu de la Brad" - University of life sciences [Iasi, Romania]
3 CCOIE-OIECC - Centre Collaborateur de l'OIE de Détection et identification chez l’homme des pathogènes animaux émergents et développement d’outils pour leur diagnostic / Collaborating Center for the Detection and identification in humans of emerging animal pathogens and development of tools for their diagnoses
4 Virologie Structurale - Structural Virology
5 Hub Bioinformatique et Biostatistique - Bioinformatics and Biostatistics HUB
6 ENVA - École nationale vétérinaire d'Alfort

Tick-borne diseases are responsible for many vector-borne diseases within Europe. Recently, novel viruses belonging to a new viral family of the order Bunyavirales were discovered in numerous tick species. In this study, we used metatranscriptomics to detect the virome, including novel viruses, associated with Ixodes ricinus collected from Romania and France. A bunyavirus-like virus related to the Bronnoya virus was identified for the first time in these regions. It presents a high level of amino-acid conservation with Bronnoya-related viruses identified in I. ricinus ticks from Norway and Croatia and with the Ixodes scapularis bunyavirus isolated from a tick cell line in Japan in 2014. Phylogenetic analyses revealed that the Bronnoya viruses’ sub-clade is distinct from several Bunyavirales families, suggesting that it could constitute a novel family within the order. To determine if Bronnoya viruses could constitute novel tick-borne arboviruses, a Luciferase immunoprecipitation assay for detecting antibodies in the viral glycoprotein of the Romanian Bronnoya virus was used to screen sera from small ruminants exposed to tick bites. No positive serum was detected, suggesting that this virus is probably not able to infect small ruminants. This study represents the first serological investigation of mammalian infections with a Bronnoya-like virus and an initial step in the identification of potential new emergences of tick-borne arboviruses.

Mots clés: sheep; ticks; spillover; metatranscriptomics; LIPS

Domaines: Virologie; Biodiversité et Ecologie

Bianca Elena Bratuleanu, Cristian Raileanu, Delphine Chrétien, Pablo Guardado-Calvo, Thomas Bigot, et al.. A Search for Tick-Associated, Bronnoya-like Virus Spillover into Sheep. Microorganisms, 2023, 11 (1), pp.209. ⟨10.3390/microorganisms11010209⟩. ⟨pasteur-04103246⟩