3.4 Coronaviridae
Alphacoronavirus 1 belongs to the Coronaviridae family that includes strains infecting cats, dogs, pigs, the spotted hyena, cheetahs and raccoon dogs (East et al., 2004; Pearks Wilkerson et al., 2004; Vijaykrishna et al., 2007). The prevalence of feline coronavirus RNA in the FPV-case libraries, 60.8% (14/23), was not dissimilar to that in healthy controls (80.5% 26/36) (p = 0.4026, Figure 2) and its read abundance was high in both groups (Table 1). The available spike proteins identified were screened for the amino acid mutations M1058L and S1060A, which are more commonly associated with systemic replication of feline infectious peritonitis virus, which is an endogenous mutant feline coronavirus that causes feline infectious peritonitis, a severe multisystemic viral disease (Chang et al., 2012). None of the spike proteins analysed contained these spike mutations, consistent with their isolation from faecal samples.