A new hantavirus from the stripe-backed shrew (Sorex cylindricauda) in the People's Republic of China

•New hantaviruses (QHSV) were detected in Sorex cylindricauda in Yunnan, China.•Sequence analyses indicated that the strains were divergent from published hantaviruses.•QHSV phylogenetically shared a common ancestor with other Sorex-related hantaviruses.•The virus-host association tanglegram indicated no evidence of host switching for QHSV.•The findings provide more information regarding the heterogeneity of hantaviruses.

Inspired by the recent discovery of genetically distinct hantaviruses from insectivore species worldwide, we performed a small-scale search for insectivore-borne hantaviruses. In this paper, we report the discovery of a new hantavirus, which was designated the Qian Hu Shan virus (QHSV). This virus was detected in the lung tissues of three stripe-backed shrews (Sorex cylindricauda), which were captured in the Yunnan Province, China. The full-length S genomic segment of the representative QHSV strain YN05-284 was 1661 nucleotides and is predicted to encode a nucleocapsid protein of 429 amino acids that starts at nucleotide position 48. It exhibited the highest similarity with other Sorex-related hantaviruses, with 68.1%-72.8% nucleotide and 71.9%-84.4% amino acid sequence identities. An analysis of a 1430-nucleotide region of the partial M segment exhibited approximately 54.4%-79.5% nucleotide and 43.2%-90.8% amino acid sequence identities to other hantaviruses. A comparison of a 432-nucleotide region of the L segment also showed similar degrees of identity, with 68.9%-78.4% nucleotide and 71.1%-93.8% amino acid sequence identities to other hantaviruses. Phylogenetic analyses using Bayesian methods indicated that QHSV shared the most recent common ancestor with other Sorex-related hantaviruses. The host was identified using a morphological assessment and verified using mitochondrial cytochrome b (mt-Cyt b) gene sequencing. A pair-wise comparison of the 1140-nucleotide mt-Cyt b gene sequence from the host demonstrated that the host was close to S. cylindricauda from Nepal with 94.3% identity. The virus-host association tanglegram, which was constructed using the Dendroscope software, indicated that the QHSV phylogeny and the host phylogeny were approximately matched, which suggests no evidence of host switching for QHSV. Our results contribute to a wider viewpoint regarding the heterogeneity of viruses that infect shrews.