Possible Bat Origin of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2

作者：Susanna K. P. Lau, Hayes K. H. Luk, Antonio C. P. Wong, Kenneth S. M. Li, Longchao Zhu, Zirong He, Joshua Fung, Tony Tat-Yin Chan, Kitty S. C. Fung, Patrick C. Y. Woo · 发表于：Emerging infectious diseases · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.3201/eid2607.200092 · 被引用次数：307 · 研究领域：SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research、Animal Virus Infections Studies、Viral gastroenteritis research and epidemiology

S eventeen years after the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic, an outbreak of pneumonia, now called coronavirus disease , was reported in Wuhan, China. Some of the early casepatients had a history of visiting the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where wildlife mammals are sold, suggesting a zoonotic origin. The causative agent was rapidly isolated from patients and identified to be a coronavirus, now designated as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (1). SARS-CoV-2 has spread rapidly to other places; 113,702 cases and 4,012 deaths had been reported in 110 countries/areas as of March 10, 2020 (2). In Hong Kong, 130 cases and 3 deaths had been reported. SARS-CoV-2 is a member of subgenus Sarbecovirus (previously lineage b) in the family Coronaviridae, genus Betacoronavirus, and is closely related to SARS-CoV, which caused the SARS epidemic during 2003, and to SARS-related-CoVs (SARSr-CoVs) in horseshoe bats discovered in Hong Kong and mainland China (3-5). Whereas SARS-CoV and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus were rapidly traced to their immediate animal sources (civet and dromedaries, respectively), the origin of SARS-CoV-2 remains obscure. SARS-CoV-2 showed high genome sequence identities (87.6%-87.8%) to SARSr-Rp-BatCoV-ZXC21/ ZC45, detected in Rhinolophus pusillus bats from Zhoushan, China, during 2015 (6). A closer-related strain, SARSr-Ra-BatCoV-RaTG13 (96.1% genome i...