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SARS virus originates in wild bats - study
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2005-09-30 14:42 The researchers collected those bats' blood, fecal and throat swabs, and
analyzed their serum samples along with DNA from fecal or throat samples using
different methods independently in laboratories in Wuhan, China and Geelong,
Australia.
They found that three communal, cave-dwelling bat species
from the horseshoe bat family demonstrated a high SARS-coronavirus antibody
prevalence. Among them, 71 percent samples of the Rhinolophuspussilus species
trapped in Guangxi showed positive.
"The high seroprevalence and wide distribution of seropositive bats is
expected for a wildlife reservoir host for a pathogen," wrote the researchers.
The coronaviruses found in bat samples were genetically diverse, but they all
show some similarity to the SARS coronavirus that aroused the pandemic, the
researchers noted. Genetical identity between a bat virus strain and the SARS
coronavirus even reached 94 percent.
Earlier this month, a team led by Professor Kwok-yung Yuen of the Hong Kong
University also reported a coronavirus in wild bats to be close relative of the
SARS virus.
But compared with these newly found SARS-like bat viruses, the bat SARS
coronavirus identified by Hong Kong researchers are genetically more distant to
the human SARS virus, according to the researchers.
The SARS-coronavirus found in humans and the SARS like coronavirus found in
bats will be collectively called the SARS cluster of coronaviruses, the
researchers suggested, noting that SARS-coronavirus may phylogenetically belong
to the family of those bat viruses.
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