The current SARS-CoV-2 The pandemic has a likely connection to bats, and the next viral outbreak probably will, too, unless scientists can quickly learn about the thousands of viruses carried by one of the most diverse mammals on the planet.
Evidence already links different species of bats to human outbreaks of SARS, MERS, some Ebola viruses, as well as Marbug, Hendra, Sosuga, and Nipah viruses. Beyond these connections, there is very little known, and a recent article in Nature Reviews Microbiology calls for more research on bat molecular biology and ecology, to help predict and hopefully prevent the next pandemic.
“The more researchers investigate, the more we found that many of these emerging pathogens, at one time or another, originated from bats,” said Michael Letko, lead author and assistant professor of molecular virology at Washington State University. Paul G. Allen School of Global Animal Health. “Over time, we have accumulated a lot of information about some of the bat species and some of the viruses they carry, but these huge dazzling holes still exist in our knowledge.”
With more than 1,400 species, bats represent an extremely diverse order of mammals, second only to rodents, which are also known as viral hosts. However, unlike rats and mice, bats are not large laboratory animals. Simply keeping flying animals in the labs is difficult. Furthermore, most of the mammalian cell lines developed for research come from other animals and cannot be used to study the viruses found in bats.
This knowledge gap is dangerous as the current pandemic shows. Bats are found almost everywhere scientists have looked, and with the expansion of human invasion in their habitat, viral infection is almost inevitable, Letko said.
“We are coming into more contact with the animal species around us in general, and then we discovered that these species are loaded with viruses,” he said. “The COVID-19 The pandemic is unfortunate, but it is not surprising. We rolled the dice for 20 years doing nothing to reduce contact with these animals. It was more or less a matter of time before something like that happened. “
In the paper, Letko and her co-authors, including WSU assistant professor Stephanie Seifert and Vincent Munster of Rocky Mountain Laboratories, describe ways to decrease the odds of the next pandemic by increasing research on bats at the smallest molecular level and wider. macro level of the environment.
While many pathogens have been identified, the authors point to the need to go beyond discovery and use the latest genetic technologies to better understand how viruses can be transmitted. This knowledge can increase the ability to rapidly develop medications after a pathogen has been found, or even better, create vaccines to protect against clusters of complete viruses before they emerge.
Letko has already taken a step in this direction. Before the current crisis, she built a platform using synthetic coronavirus particles to assess which ones were most likely to infect human cells. When the current pandemic began, Letko tested the SARS-Cov-2 genome as soon as the sequence was available and quickly identified the probable receptor in human cells. That study, published in Microbiology nature On February 24, 2020, he was one of the first to provide functional laboratory data on the new virus, providing researchers with the information and tools necessary to help determine which existing drugs might work against SARS-Cov-2 and start developing new ones. as evidence various aspects of the efficacy of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine.
Letko is establishing his laboratory at WSU to continue this work, providing initial detection of bat-borne viruses to help identify those that are most likely to be transmitted to humans.
Beyond the lab, Letko and colleagues point to the need for a better understanding of bat ecology that can lead to solutions that are relatively simple to implement. The researchers cite examples such as the effort to vaccinate horses in Australia to stop the Hendra virus that was spreading from bats to horses and then potentially to humans. Another intervention in Bangladesh simply involved putting lids on palm sap containers to keep bats away and prevent human outbreaks of the Nipah virus.
“Sometimes you don’t need vaccines or medicine. It’s just a behavior change that helps mitigate and reduce contact between people and animals, “Letko said.” These are some of the types of interventions we can take once we begin to understand what these viruses really do. “
References
“Diversity, spread and emergence of bat-borne viruses” by Michael Letko, Stephanie N. Seifert, Kevin J. Olival, Raina K. Plowright and Vincent J. Munster, June 11, 2020, Nature Reviews Microbiology.
DOI: 10.1038 / s41579-020-0394-z
“Functional Assessment of Cellular Entry and Receptor Use for SARS-CoV-2 and Other B-Line Betacoronaviruses” by Michael Letko, Andrea Marzi, and Vincent Munster, February 24, 2020, Microbiology nature.
DOI: 10.1038 / s41564-020-0688-y
