Chinese scientists have made new progress in the study of SARS coronavirus

Recently, experts from Wuhan Virus Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences made new progress in the study of the origin and evolution of SARS coronavirus, and experts found a natural gene bank of bat SARS coronavirus in Yunnan, China.
bats are natural storage hosts of SARS coronavirus. Since 2005, several research teams have discovered an increasing number of SARS coronavirus in a variety of chrysanthemum bats in different parts of the world. However, all the bats that have been reported so far have at least two genes that are highly differentiated from SARS coronavirus, and questions remain unanswered about how SARS evolved in bats and where they came from in bat populations.
The Shi Zhengli research team at the Wuhan Virus Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been monitoring the SARS coronavirus population in a cave in Yunnan Province for a long time since 2011, and SARS coronavirus RNA was detected in 64 samples of bat feces and swabs. Analysis shows that bat SARS coronavirus, which is endemic in this cave, is highly diverse.
experts genetically analyzed 11 newly discovered SARS coronavirus and genome-wide sequence analysis of 15 strains found in the cave. The results showed that bat SARS coronavirus, which is endemic in the cave, is similar to each other in the unstrucular protein genes, and some of their genes show extremely rich genetic diversity. All genomic parts of SARS coronavirus can be found in the natural gene pool of SARS coronavirus.
Through further recombination analysis, experts found evidence of frequent recombination at multiple locations within these SARS coronavirus genes, and speculated that the direct ancestors of SARS coronavirus may have been caused by a series of recombinations between the ancestor strains of these bats SARS coronavirus.
related research results were recently published online in the international authoritative journal of pathogens, Public Library of Science Pathogens. (Source: Xinhua News Agency, Li Wei)