Back

Isolation of bat sarbecoviruses of SARS-CoV-2 clade, Japan

Murakami, S.; Kitamura, T.; Matsugo, H.; Kamiki, H.; Oyabu, K.; Sekine, W.; Takenaka-Uema, A.; Sakai-Tagawa, Y.; Kawaoka, Y.; Horimoto, T.

2022-05-16 microbiology
10.1101/2022.05.16.492045 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Betacoronaviruses have caused 3 outbreaks in the past 2 decades. SARS-CoV-2, in particular, has caused a serious pandemic. As the betacoronaviruses are considered to originate from bats, surveillance of bat betacoronaviruses is crucial for understanding the mechanism of cross-species transition and potential for future outbreaks. We previously detected and characterized a SARS-CoV-2-related sarbecovirus, Rc-o319, from Rhinolophus cornutus in Japan. Here, we detected several bat sarbecoviruses of the SARS-CoV-2 clade from R. cornutus in multiple locations in Japan, and successfully isolated them using Vero/TMPRSS2 cells stably expressing R. cornutus ACE2 (Vero-RcACE2). The coding sequences of S1 region varied among isolates, whereas other genetic regions were highly conserved. Isolates were efficiently grown in Vero-RcACE2 cells, but did not replicate in Vero/TMPRSS2 cells stably expressing human ACE2, suggesting a narrow host range. Further long-term epidemiological studies of sarbecoviruses in wildlife are expected to facilitate the assessment of the risk of their spillover potential.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.