Buhirugu virus 1

On a sunny day 7 years ago in the Budongo Forest Reserve in Uganda,
researchers were startled to observe chimpanzees scoop dry bat feces from under a hollow tree and devour it.
In 60 years of observations at Budongo, no one had ever seen such a thing, recalls veterinary epidemiologist Tony Goldberg of
the University of Wisconsin—Madison.
“Aside from the ick factor, we all had the exact same thought,” he says.
“They must be exposed to horrible bat-borne viruses.”

That suspicion proved correct.
Though the bat feces is rich in nutrients, it contains dozens of previously unknown viruses,
Goldberg and colleagues report today in Communications Biology.
These novel pathogens include a new coronavirus —... .

...
Analyzing the RNA and DNA in the guano, Goldberg and colleagues detected 27 novel viruses,
including a previously unknown coronavirus the team named Buhirugu virus 1.

Data availability
All raw sequence reads were deposited in the NIH National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)
Sequence Read Achieve under BioProject PRJNA1087330 (accession numbers SAMN40440184-SAMN40440195).
All assembled virus genome sequences were deposited in NCBI GenBank under
accession numbers OP199247 and OP834146-OP834171.

AUTHORS Rice,G.K., Cer,R.Z., Bennett,A.J., Bishop-Lilly,K.A. and Goldberg,T.L.
TITLE Smoking causes Ebola and COVID? Tobacco farming exposes African wildlife to bat-borne viruses
JOURNAL Unpublished
REFERENCE 2 (bases 1 to 15433)
AUTHORS Rice,G.K.
TITLE Direct Submission
JOURNAL Submitted (09-AUG-2022) Genomics & Bioinformatics, Naval Medical
Research Center, Biological Defense Research Directorate, 8400
Research Plaza, Frederick, MD 21702, USA