Coronavirus ‘close relative’ found in bats in China
- New virus has key feature in common with pandemic pathogen, suggesting that Sars-CoV-2 did not escape from lab, researcher says
- But genome differences make the newly discovered virus less of a threat to humans
In a peer-reviewed study to be published in the journal Current Biology, researchers from China and Australia found that the two viruses share a key feature that the pandemic coronavirus – known as Sars-CoV-2 – uses to trigger disease.
The team found the “close relative” virus, called RmYN02, among 227 bat samples collected in the southwestern Chinese province of Yunnan between May and October last year.
Like Sars-CoV-2, RmYN02 has amino acid insertions at the junction of its spike protein’s subunits.
These insertions, which are thought to increase Sars-CoV-2’s capacity to cause disease, were previously seen as highly unusual and even indicative of laboratory manipulation, according to one of the study’s authors.
“Our findings suggest that these insertion events, which initially appeared to be very unusual, can, in fact, occur naturally in animal betacoronaviruses,” Science Daily quoted Professor Shi Weifeng, director of the Institute of Pathogen Biology at Shandong First Medical University, as saying.