Nature Communications (Aug 2020)

Origin and cross-species transmission of bat coronaviruses in China

  • Alice Latinne,
  • Ben Hu,
  • Kevin J. Olival,
  • Guangjian Zhu,
  • Libiao Zhang,
  • Hongying Li,
  • Aleksei A. Chmura,
  • Hume E. Field,
  • Carlos Zambrana-Torrelio,
  • Jonathan H. Epstein,
  • Bei Li,
  • Wei Zhang,
  • Lin-Fa Wang,
  • Zheng-Li Shi,
  • Peter Daszak

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17687-3
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 15

Abstract

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Bats are a likely reservoir of zoonotic coronaviruses (CoVs). Here, analyzing bat CoV sequences in China, the authors find that alpha-CoVs have switched hosts more frequently than betaCoVs, identify a bat family and genus that are highly involved in host-switching, and define hotspots of CoV evolutionary diversity.