Shi Zhengli
CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 430071 Wuhan, China.
Bull Acad Natl Med. 2021 Aug;205(7):732-736. doi: 10.1016/j.banm.2021.05.008. Epub 2021 May 28.
From the beginning of this century, three coronaviruses (CoVs) have caused severe human respiratory diseases, including severe respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19), which outbroke in 2002-2003, 2012 and 2019-2020, respectively. These viruses are three different species belonging to family, genus. Discovery of closely-related CoVs in bats indicates that bats are natural reservoirs of these viruses. How and when the bat CoVs cross-species barriers to infect humans are largely understudied. This article provides an overview of the distribution, genetic evolution and interspecies transmission of bat coronaviruses in China, particularly focusing on bat SARS-related CoVs (SARSr-CoVs). Our studies showed that SARS-related CoVs are highly prevalent in horseshoe bats and some of them use the same receptor as SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 and have wide cell tissue tropism. However, these bat viruses seem to be low pathogenic in human ACE2 transgenic mice compared with the SARS-CoV-2. These results imply that these bat CoVs have potential interspecies transmission to other animals and humans. Our work highlights the necessity of preparedness for future emerging infectious diseases caused by these CoVs.
从本世纪初开始，三种冠状病毒（CoVs）引发了严重的人类呼吸道疾病，包括严重急性呼吸综合征（SARS）、中东呼吸综合征（MERS）和2019年冠状病毒病（COVID-19），它们分别于2002年至2003年、2012年以及2019年至2020年爆发。这些病毒属于冠状病毒科、冠状病毒属的三个不同物种。在蝙蝠中发现的密切相关冠状病毒表明，蝙蝠是这些病毒的天然宿主。蝙蝠冠状病毒如何以及何时跨越物种屏障感染人类，在很大程度上仍未得到充分研究。本文概述了中国蝙蝠冠状病毒的分布、基因进化和种间传播，特别关注与蝙蝠严重急性呼吸综合征相关的冠状病毒（SARSr-CoVs）。我们的研究表明，与严重急性呼吸综合征相关的冠状病毒在菊头蝠中高度流行，其中一些与严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒和严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2使用相同的受体，并且具有广泛的细胞组织嗜性。然而，与严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2相比，这些蝙蝠病毒在人血管紧张素转换酶2转基因小鼠中似乎致病性较低。这些结果表明，这些蝙蝠冠状病毒具有向其他动物和人类进行种间传播的潜力。我们的工作凸显了对这些冠状病毒未来引发的新兴传染病做好防范准备的必要性。
