How the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 made the leap from animals to humans is a puzzle that scientists are trying to solve as humanity comes to grip with the deadly pandemic sweeping the globe.
Brought forward for early publication on Thursday by Nature after peer review, the first paper identifies a similar coronavirus to the one now infecting humans in the Malayan pangolin population of southern China.
Understanding the evolutionary pathway by which this novel coronavirus has transferred to humans will help us not only combat the current pandemic but assist in identifying future threats from other coronaviruses in other species.
This paper is an important part of solving that puzzle.
The author said: "The role that pangolins play in the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 (the cause of COVID-19) is still unclear. However, it is striking is that the pangolin viruses contain some genomic regions that are very closely related to the human virus. The most important of these is the receptor binding domain that dictates how the virus is able to attach and infect human cells."
The paper identifies pangolins as possible intermediate hosts for the novel human virus that has emerged. The authors call for these animals and others to be removed from wet markets in order to prevent zoonotic transmission to humans.
The author said: "It is clear that wildlife contains many coronaviruses that could potentially emerge in humans in the future. A crucial lesson from this pandemic to help prevent the next one is that humans must reduce their exposure to wildlife, for example by banning 'wet markets' and the trade in wildlife."
Just last week Nature Medicine published research co-authored by the author.That paper has dispelled the fanciful idea that the novel coronavirus was a manufactured biological agent.
Using comparative analysis of genomic data, the scientists show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus.
The author said: "There is simply no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 - the cause of COVID-19 - came out of a lab. In reality, this is the sort of natural disease emergence event that researchers in the field like myself have been warning about for many years."
That paper has quickly become the highest ranked academic study of all time as measured by Altmetric, a company that monitors media coverage of research papers.
The new paper in Cell the authors outline our current knowledge of what the genomic data reveals about the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 virus and discuss the gaps in our knowledge.
This includes taking samples from the Wuhan wet market where it is believed the virus originated. The paper says that "genome sequences of 'environmental samples' - likely surfaces - from the market have now been obtained and phylogenetic analysis reveals that they are very closely related to viruses sampled from the earliest Wuhan patients".
However, the authors are quick to point out that as "not all of the early [COVID-19] cases were market associated, it is possible that the emergence story is more complicated than first suspected".
The paper says that the SARS-CoV-2 virus is likely to become the fifth endemic coronavirus in the human population. It concludes that "coronaviruses clearly have the capacity to jump species boundaries and adapt to new hosts, making it straightforward to predict that more will emerge in the future".
How we respond to that will require more research to assist develop public health policy.
They point to policy and other measures to help prevent other coronaviruses becoming a health danger to humans. These include:
- Surveillance of animal coronaviruses in a variety of mammalian species. It is known that bats carry many coronaviruses, we know little about what other species carry these viruses and which has the potential to emerge in humans.
- Increase action against the illegal wildlife trade of exotic animals
- Removal of mammalian and perhaps avian wildlife from wet markets
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(20)30328-7
http://sciencemission.com/site/index.php?page=news&type=view&id=publications%2Fa-genomic-perspective&filter=22
A Genomic Perspective on the Origin and Emergence of SARS-CoV-2
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