Molecular detection and characterization of three novel parvoviruses belonging to two different subfamilies in zoo birds

Abstract Birds carry a large number of viruses that may cause diseases in animals or human. At present, virome of zoo birds are limited. In this study, using viral metagenomics method, we investigated the feces virome of zoo birds collected from a zoo of Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. Three novel parvoviruses were obtained and characterized. The genome of the three viruses are 5,909 bp, 4,411 bp and 4,233 bp in length respectively which encoded four or five ORFs. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that these three novel parvoviruses clustered with other strains formed three different clades. Pairwise comparison of NS1 amino acid sequences showed that Bir-01-1 shared 44.30%-74.92% aa sequence identity with other parvoviruses belonging to the genus Aveparvovirus, while Bir-03-1 and Bir-04-1 had lower than 66.87% and 53.09% aa sequence identity with other parvoviruses belonging to the genus Chaphamaparvovirus. These three viruses were identified as three novel species of the genus Aveparvovirus and Chaphamaparvovirus respectively basing on the species demarcation criteria of parvovirus. Our findings broaden the knowledge of the genetic diversity of parvovirus and provide epidemiological data for the outbreak of potential bird’s parvovirus disease.