A group of SARS-like coronaviruses(SL-CoV)have been identified in horseshoe bats.Despite SL-CoVs and SARS-CoV share identical genome structure and high-level sequence similarity,SL-CoV does not bind to the same cellular receptor as for SARS-CoV and the N-terminus of the S proteins only share 64%amino acid identity,suggesting there are fundamental differences between these two groups of coronaviruses.To gain insight into the basis of this difference,we established a recombinant adenovirus system expressing the S protein from SL-CoV(rAd-Rp3-S)to investigate its immune characterization.Our results showed that immunized mice generated strong humoral immune responses against the SL-CoV S protein.Moreover,a strong cellular immune response demonstrated by elevated IFN-γand IL-6 levels was also observed in these mice.However,the induced antibody from these mice had weaker cross-reaction with the SARS-CoV S protein,and did not neutralize HIV pseudotyped with SARS-CoV S protein.These results demonstrated that the immunogenicity of the SL-CoV S protein is distinct from that of SARS-CoV,which may cause the immunological differences between human SARS-CoV and bat SL-CoV.Furthermore,the recombinant virus could serve as a potential vaccine candidate against bat SL-CoV infection. A group of SARS-like coronaviruses (SL-CoV) have been identified in horseshoe bats.Despite SL-CoVs and SARS-CoV share identical genome structure and high-level sequence similarity, SL-CoV does not bind to the same cellular receptor as for SARS-CoV and the N-terminus of the S proteins only share 64% amino acid identity, suggesting there fundamental difference between these two groups of coronaviruses. To gain insight into the basis of this difference, we established a recombinant adenovirus system expressing the S protein from SL-CoV (rAd-Rp3-S) to investigate its immune characterization. Our results showed that immunized mice produced strong humoral immune responses against the SL-CoV S protein. More over, a strong cellular immune response demonstrated enhanced by IFN -γand IL-6 levels was also observed in these mice. However, the induced antibodies from these mice had weaker cross-reaction with the SARS-CoV S protein, and did not neutralize HIV pseudotyped with SARS-CoV S protein.These results de monstrated that the immunogenicity of the SL-CoV S protein is distinct from that of SARS-CoV, which may cause the immunological differences between human SARS-CoV and bat SL-CoV. Future’s, the recombinant virus could serve as a potential vaccine candidate against bat SL-CoV infection.