Susceptibility of Primary Jamaican Fruit Bat Cell Line to Human Coronavirus OC43
Category: Research Poster
Author(s): Evan Smith, Luke Namesnik
Presenter(s): Evan Smith
Mentors(s): Phillida Charley, William Schountz
Bats are reservoir hosts of many viruses of human concern such as SARS-CoV-1, Nipah, Hendra, and Marburg viruses. These viruses can cause high fatality rates in human populations, but the bats themselves do not show signs of disease. Researchers have been interested in determining the effects of bat virus infections in humans. Although, little research has been done on the effects of human viruses on bats. Human coronavirus OC43 (OC43-CoV) is a positive sense RNA virus belonging to the genus Betacoronavirus and is one of the human common cold viruses. In this experiment, we inoculated a Jamaican fruit bat (Artibeus jamaicensis) kidney cell line, Ajk6-8, at an MOI of 0.01 and collected supernatant at 1, 24, 72, 120, and 168 hours post infection. Viral RNA was detected in the time points supernatants by qPCR. OC43-CoV is known to not cause distinguishable cytopathic effect (CPE) in many common cell lines; however, the Ajk6-8 cell line shows clear CPE at 72hpi. This study identifies a bat cell line as a useful tool for researching OC43-CoV; furthermore, it suggests that in vivo challenge studies of Jamaican fruit bats may provide a new animal model for OC43-CoV.