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A metatranscriptomic evaluation of viruses in field-collected bed bugs

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Abstract

Cimex lectularius, known as the common bed bug, is a widespread hematophagous human ectoparasite and urban pest that is not known to be a vector of any human infectious disease agents. However, few studies in the era of molecular biology have profiled the microorganisms harbored by field populations of bed bugs. The objective of this study was to examine the viruses present in a large sampling of common bed bugs and related bat bugs (Cimex pipistrelle). RNA sequencing was undertaken on an international sampling of > 500 field-collected bugs, and multiple workflows were used to assemble contigs and query these against reference nucleotide databases to identify viral genomes. Shuangao bed bug virus 2, an uncharacterized rhabdovirus previously discovered in Cimex hemipterus from China, was found in several bed bug pools from the USA and Europe, as well as in C. pipistrelle, suggesting that this virus is common among bed bug populations. In addition, Shuangao bed bug virus 1 was detected in a bed bug pool from China, and sequences matching Enterobacteria phage P7 were found in all bed bug pools, indicating the ubiquitous presence of phage-derived elements in the genome of the bed bug or its enterobacterial symbiont. However, viral diversity was low in bed bugs in our study, as no other viral genomes were detected with significant coverage. These results provide evidence against frequent virus infection in bed bugs. Nonetheless, our investigation had several important limitations, and additional studies should be conducted to better understand the prevalence and composition of viruses in bed bugs. Most notably, our study largely focused on insects from urban areas in industrialized nations, thus likely missing infrequent virus infections and those that could occur in rural or tropical environments or developing nations.

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Data availability

Raw sequencing reads are publicly available for additional mining and analysis. These can be accessed from the NCBI SRA under BioProject ID: PRJNA972449.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the following individuals and organizations for providing samples, laboratory assistance, or communications regarding sequencing: Logan Pest, General Pest Control, Hoban Pest Control, Patton Pest Control, Clark Pest Control, Southwest Exterminating, Charlie Masters, Mike Lipsett, Jason Temple, Rick DeDonato, Steve Kmetz, Carl Easter, Jeff Satzman, Luis Agurto, Pat Zickler, Alan Feuer, John Gedeon, Changlu Wang, Yijuan Xu, Jean-Michel Berenger, Maureen Laroche, Richard Naylor, E. Ricky Chan, Gale Ridge, Andrew Young, John Gibson, Richard Cooper, Jeff White, Clarise Starr, and Terry Humphrey.

Funding

The study was supported by an internal UHCMC Department of Emergency Medicine Ford Geriatric Emergency Medicine award to JMS and by a US HUD Office of Lead Hazard Control and Healthy Homes, Healthy Homes Technical Studies grant (SDHHU0074-22) to JEP.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Emergency Medicine, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center & Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Johnathan M. Sheele

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Jacksonville, FL, 32224, USA

    Johnathan M. Sheele

  3. Division of Basic Biomedical Sciences, Sanford School of Medicine, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, 57069, USA

    Vincent Peta & Jose E. Pietri

  4. Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Alexander Miron

  5. Department of Ecology, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Ondrej Balvin

  6. Bed Bugs Limited, 3 Cobden Road, London, UK

    David Cain

  7. Department of Dermatology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Simone Edelheit & Tom McCormick

Authors
  1. Johnathan M. Sheele
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  2. Vincent Peta
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  3. Alexander Miron
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  4. Ondrej Balvin
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  6. Simone Edelheit
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  8. Jose E. Pietri
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Contributions

JS: investigation, conceptualization, methodology, validation, supervision, funding acquisition, resources, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. VP: formal analysis. writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. AM: conceptualization, methodology, resources. OB: resources. DC: resources. SE: conceptualization, methodology. TM: conceptualization, methodology, resources. JP: investigation, conceptualization, methodology, validation, supervision, funding acquisition, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Johnathan M. Sheele or Jose E. Pietri.

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Sheele, J.M., Peta, V., Miron, A. et al. A metatranscriptomic evaluation of viruses in field-collected bed bugs. Parasitol Res 123, 4 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-023-08049-1

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