About
The ChinEBatRhab project aims to unravel the diversity and the circulation of rhabdoviruses in European and Chinese bats. It focused on an extensive surveillance in Chinese and European bats to investigate the prevalence and the diversity of rhabdoviruses. In China, this surveillance is based on the use in archival samples of a molecular method (pan-rhabdo-RT-PCR) dedicated to the broad-spectrum detection of rhabdoviruses. Complementary to this retrospective analysis on archival samples, an active surveillance of rhabdovirus circulation using these new tools will start on selected Chinese bat colonies. In Europe, the study is also focused on the screening using the pan-rhabdo-RT-PCR of a large panel of archived bat samples collected from France, Spain and Czech Republic, and the molecular characterization of the new rhabdoviruses. All of these studies will offer a better understanding of ecology, evolution and pathology of bat-related rhabdovirus, as well as to provide useful information for public health about prevention of zoonosis rhabdoviruses in China and Europe. This project, initiated in 2016 in collaboration with the Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens and Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China (Pr. Zhengli Shi and Dongsheng Luo), is partly funded by the Chinese Scolarship Council and by Campus France (programs PHC Cai Yuanpei and XuGuangQi). Other collaborators include the Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Spain (Dr. Jordi Serra Cobo) and the Institute of Vertebrate Biology, Brno, Czech Republic (Dr. Natalia Martinkova and Markéta Harazim).
