Remember SARS? These bats are apparently to blame.

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MomentsofSanity

MomentsofSanity

Lifer
Jan 25, 2011
17,103
9,596
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Apparently researchers in China spent 5 years collecting guano and anal swabs from the bats after identifying a single cave where everything matched.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9?utm_source=TWT_NatureNews&sf174975400=1

To clinch the case, a team led by Shi Zheng-Li and Cui Jie of the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China sampled thousands of horseshoe bats in locations across the country3. “The most challenging work is to locate the caves, which usually are in remote areas,” says Cui. After finding a particular cave in Yunnan, southwestern China, in which the strains of coronavirus looked similar to human versions4,5, the researchers spent five years monitoring the bats that lived there, collecting fresh guano and taking anal swabs1.

They sequenced the genomes of 15 viral strains from the bats and found that, taken together, the strains contain all the genetic pieces that make up the human version. Although no single bat had the exact strain of SARS coronavirus that is found in humans, the analysis showed that the strains mix often. The human strain could have emerged from such mixing, says Kwok-Yung Yuen, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong who co-discovered the SARS virus: “The authors should be congratulated for confirming what has been suspected.”
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Last edited:
UNCjigga

UNCjigga

Lifer
Dec 12, 2000
25,625
10,325
136
Reminds me of that infection movie where the last scene shows some bat pooping on a Chinese chef, who wipes the guano off his apron with his hands and then proceeds to handle the food (which killed Gwyneth Paltrow in the first scene.) What was that movie again? Pandemic?
 
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