Nat Microbiol: Scientists have successfully identified the evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2.

August 9, 2020 // -- Researchers from China, Europe and the United States have reconstructed the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 in a study published in the international journal Nature Microbiology. Evolutionary history has revealed that the genealogy that produced the virus has been spreading in bats for decades, and that the genealogy may include other viruses capable of infecting humans, and the findings suggest that there are some potential for future effective prevention of disease pandemics caused by the virus genealogy.
Image source: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain researcher Maciej Boni says coronaviruses have highly recombinant genetic material, which means that different regions of the virus genome may be available from multiple sources, making it difficult to reconstruct the origin of SARS-CoV-2; Using three different bioinforforfortic methods to identify and remove recombinant regions in the SARS-CoV-2 genome, they then constructed a systematic developmental history of non-recombinant regions and compared them to each other to determine which particular virus was involved in the recombination event in the past, allowing researchers to reconsconsitut the evolutionary relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and its closest bat and pyroma virus.
researchers found that the viral line line line of SARS-CoV-2 began to deviate/differentiate from other bat viruses about 40-70 years ago, and importantly, although SARS-CoV-2 is genetically similar to the RaTG13 coronavirus (approximately similarity) 96%), RaTG13 coronavirus was isolated in 2013 from a sample of a chrysanthemum bat in Yunnan Province, China, but the researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 and RatG13 coronavirus began to differentiate as early as 1969.
researcher Philippe Lemey said the ability to estimate fork times after splitting and recombining history in this study may help to delve deeper into the history of the origins of many different pathogens. the
researchers also found that an ancient feature shared by SARS-CoV-2 with its close relatives is located in the receptacle binding domain (RBD) of the puncture protein, which promotes virus recognition and binding to receptors on the surface of human cells; Or does it take an intermediate species to make the leap? For SARS-CoV-2, the researchers note, other researchers may have mistakenly believed that key evolutionary mutations could occur in manicures.
researcher Robertson said the RBD sequence of SARS-CoV-2 has so far been found only in a few pyrethroid viruses, and that another key feature considered critical to THES-CoV-2's ability to infect humans - the insertion of multiple lysion sites in the puncture protein may not be close to THES-CoV-2 kinship Other bats have observed; however, while pyrethroids may act as intermediate hosts for the spread of SARS-CoV-2 to human organisms, there is no evidence that pyrolyse infections are necessary for the spread of the virus to humans;
The researchers concluded that preventing future pandemics requires researchers to sample more wild bats and implement a human disease surveillance system that effectively identifies new human pathogens and responds in real time; researcher Robertson says the key to successful surveillance is to know which viruses we are looking for and prioritize viruses that are susceptible to human infection; and we should be well prepared for the SARS virus epidemic.
We're already too late to respond to the initial SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, but it may not be our last coronavirus pandemic, and we need to build a more comprehensive real-time surveillance system to target the virus in time for double-digit numbers of cases."
sources: Boni, M.F., Lemey, P., Jiang, X. et al. Evolutionary Origins of SARS-CoV-2 sarbecovirus lineage responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic. Nat Microbiol (2020).doi:10.1038/s41564-020-0771-4.