By Jon Cohen, Kai KupferschmidtJun. 1, 2020 , 7:30 PM
An international team of scientists whose funding for research on bat coronaviruses was recently yanked by the U.S. government has published what it calls the most comprehensive analysis ever done of such viruses. In a preprint posted yesterday on bioRxiv, the researchers examine partial genetic sequences of 781 coronaviruses found in bats in China, more than one-third of which have never been published.
Although the analysis cannot pinpoint the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, it does single out one genus, Rhinolophus, also known as Chinese horseshoe bats, as crucial to the evolution of coronaviruses. “It seems that by sheer phylogeographic, historical, evolutionary bad luck, Rhinolophus ends up being the major reservoir for SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome]-related coronaviruses,” says study co-author Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that last month saw its multimillion-dollar grant to study bat coronaviruses with colleagues in China cut by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). On 21 May, 77 Nobel laureates urged NIH to reconsider its decision to end the funding.
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 through recombination and strong purifying selection
https://advances.sciencemag.org/cont...sciadv.abb9153
An international team of scientists whose funding for research on bat coronaviruses was recently yanked by the U.S. government has published what it calls the most comprehensive analysis ever done of such viruses. In a preprint posted yesterday on bioRxiv, the researchers examine partial genetic sequences of 781 coronaviruses found in bats in China, more than one-third of which have never been published.
Although the analysis cannot pinpoint the origin of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, it does single out one genus, Rhinolophus, also known as Chinese horseshoe bats, as crucial to the evolution of coronaviruses. “It seems that by sheer phylogeographic, historical, evolutionary bad luck, Rhinolophus ends up being the major reservoir for SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome]-related coronaviruses,” says study co-author Peter Daszak, president of EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that last month saw its multimillion-dollar grant to study bat coronaviruses with colleagues in China cut by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). On 21 May, 77 Nobel laureates urged NIH to reconsider its decision to end the funding.
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Emergence of SARS-CoV-2 through recombination and strong purifying selection
https://advances.sciencemag.org/cont...sciadv.abb9153
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