Mary Wilson
Well-known member
Horseshoe bats carry viruses closely related to SARS-CoV-2, but they probably can’t spread in people yet.
27 June 2023
Ewen Callaway
Coronavirus hunters looking for the next pandemic threats have focused on China and southeast Asia, where wild bats carry SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relatives.
But a survey of UK bat species suggests that researchers might want to cast a wider net. The trawl turned up new coronaviruses, and some from the same group as SARS-CoV-2.
Laboratory studies with safe versions of these viruses suggest that some share key adaptations with SARS-CoV-2 — but are unlikely to spread in humans without further evolution.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to a group of coronaviruses called sarbecoviruses, which circulate in bats. But before the pandemic, efforts to find and characterize these viruses focused on Asia. “Europe and the UK had been totally overlooked,” says Vincent Savolainen, an evolutionary geneticist at Imperial College London who led the study, published on 27 June in Nature Communications[SUP]1[/SUP].
To help plug this gap, Savolainen and his colleagues teamed up with groups involved in bat rehabilitation and conservation to collect a total of 48 faecal samples from bats representing 16 of the 17 species that breed in the United Kingdom. Genetic sequencing turned up nine coronaviruses, including four sarbecoviruses and one related to the coronavirus responsible for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, which periodically spills over into camels and humans. ...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02151-1
27 June 2023
Ewen Callaway
Coronavirus hunters looking for the next pandemic threats have focused on China and southeast Asia, where wild bats carry SARS-CoV-2’s closest known relatives.
But a survey of UK bat species suggests that researchers might want to cast a wider net. The trawl turned up new coronaviruses, and some from the same group as SARS-CoV-2.
Laboratory studies with safe versions of these viruses suggest that some share key adaptations with SARS-CoV-2 — but are unlikely to spread in humans without further evolution.
SARS-CoV-2 belongs to a group of coronaviruses called sarbecoviruses, which circulate in bats. But before the pandemic, efforts to find and characterize these viruses focused on Asia. “Europe and the UK had been totally overlooked,” says Vincent Savolainen, an evolutionary geneticist at Imperial College London who led the study, published on 27 June in Nature Communications[SUP]1[/SUP].
To help plug this gap, Savolainen and his colleagues teamed up with groups involved in bat rehabilitation and conservation to collect a total of 48 faecal samples from bats representing 16 of the 17 species that breed in the United Kingdom. Genetic sequencing turned up nine coronaviruses, including four sarbecoviruses and one related to the coronavirus responsible for Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, which periodically spills over into camels and humans. ...
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02151-1