New York, November 19, : .New research suggests that some ancestral rodents were infected with SARS-like coronaviruses.
This may have led to them acquiring tolerance to or resistance to these pathogens.It is possible that rodents could be reservoirs for SARS viruses. Researchers at Princeton University, the US, conducted an evolutionary analysis on the ACE2 receptors that SARS viruses use to enter mammalian cells.This was done across all mammalian species.
These results were published in PLOS Computational Biology.They showed that primates have highly conserved sequences in amino acids at the sites of the ACE2 antagonist known to bind SARS virus.
These spots, however, were home to a wider variety of rodents and a faster rate of evolutionary development.
The results showed that SARS-like viruses have not served as evolutionary drivers for primate evolution, however, some rodent species may have been subject to multiple SARS-like coronavirus infection over a long evolutionary period.
Some rodent species might have developed some tolerance to or resistance against infections by SARS-like coronaviruses.Primate and non-adapted mammals may be more vulnerable to symptoms.
Sean King from the varsity’s Department of Molecular Biology said, “Our study suggests ancestral rodents could have been infected with SARS-like Coronaviruses multiple times and may have developed some tolerance or resistance to SARS viruses.”
Mona Singh, from Princeton’s Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics, said that this raises the intriguing possibility that certain rodent species could be carriers of SARS-like coronaviruses.
Although all human coronaviruses before now have clear zoonotic origins; some experts and studies have suggested that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes Covid-19) has also moved from non-human animals to humans.
Research has previously shown that Chinese Horseshoe Bats can tolerate many SARS-like viruses.
Researchers said that it is crucial to identify other species that are able to tolerate coronaviruses in order to detect potential reservoirs of pathogens that could spread to humans.
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