Using noninvasive metagenomics to characterize viral communities from wildlife.

ABSTRACT: Microbial communities play an important role in organismal and ecosystem health. While high-throughput metabarcoding has revolutionized the study of bacterial communities, generating comparable viral communities has proven elusive, particularly in wildlife samples where the diversity of viruses and limited quantities of viral nucleic acid present distinctive challenges. Metagenomic sequencing is a promising solution for studying viral communities, but the lack of standardized methods currently precludes comparisons across host taxa or localities. Here, we developed an untargeted shotgun metagenomic sequencing protocol to generate comparable viral communities from noninvasively collected faecal and oropharyngeal swabs. Using samples from common vampire bats (Desmodus rotundus), a key specie

SUBMITTER: Bergner LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6378809 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature