Novel Bocaparvovirus identified in goats identified in China

Bocapavovirus, a member of the genus Bocaparvovirus within the subfamily Parvovirinae and the family Parvoviridae, is a small, non-enveloped, single-stranded DNA virus. While this pathogen poses health risks to both humans and animals, there have been no reports of Bocaparvovirus infections in caprine (goats) to date. Hence, the pathogenicity and prevalence of Caprine Bocaparvovirus (CapBOV) remain unknown.

In a recent article published in KeAi's Journal of Integrative Agriculture, a team of researchers from China identified a novel Bocaparvovirus in goat fecal samples using metagenomic techniques, with detection in goats from 3 regions in China: Sichuan, Hunan and Chongqing.

“In May 2023, a goat farm in Sichuan Province was plagued by diarrhea. The fecal samples were collected and tested for common diarrheal pathogens (Caprine kobuvirus, Caprine enterovirus, Caprine astrovirus, and Bopivirus), all of which were either negative or had meager positivity rates,” shares the study's correspondence author, Keha-mo Abi, a lecturer at Southwest Minzu University in Chengdu, China.

Nonetheless, the team obtained a Bocaparvovirus fragment with a length of 1,832 bp using high-throughput sequencing technology.

“Six pairs of primers were designed based on the full genome sequence of ECBOV-tdf70 strain to amplify the entire genome,” explains Abi. “Using PCR, we identified a complete coding sequence from a goat diarrhea fecal sample, which was named CapBOV-SWUN (GenBank accession number, PP993457). The full genome of CapBOV-SWUN is 5,351 bp in length.”

BLASTN and BLASTX analyses demonstrated that the CapBOV-SWUN genome sequence exhibits a high sequence identity to the ECBOV-tdf70 strain, with a nucleotide identity of 87.77%. “Specifically, the full-length NS1, NP1, and VP1 regions of CapBOV-SWUN strain showed nucleotide and amino acid identities of 90.8%/91.2%, 89.9%/88.8%, and 81.6%/80.1%, respectively, when compared to ECBOV-tdf70,” adds Abi.

Notably, these identities are the highest among all Bocaparvovirus sequences analyzed. NS1 amino acid sequence was more than 85% identical to the ECBOV sequence. “According to ICTV criteria, these two viruses belong to the same species. The fact that ECBOV-tdf70 was originally discovered in wild animals suggests a potential for interspecies transmission, highlighting the importance of monitoring Bocaparvoviruses across different animal populations,” says Abi.

The team recommends further research to investigate the pathogenicity of this newly discovered Bocaparvovirus.

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Contact Authors: Kegu Ji'e, E-mail: jekgcom@gmail.com; Falong Yang, E-mail: falong.yang@swun.edu.cn; #Correspondence Keha-mo Abi, E-mail: abikehamo@swun.edu.cn

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