It Probably Came From Bats
Tracing the evolutionary lineage of the coronavirus
One of the most enduring mysteries of the coronavirus is where it originated. It was first traced to a wet market in Wuhan — where vendors sell produce, meat, seafood, and occasionally live animals — which raised the likely possibility that it came from an animal. But which one? Much of the research pointed to bats (which are common reservoirs for viruses), but other work implicated pangolins, a cute species of anteaters that’s highly prized for its scales. Research published in Nature in March made very clear that it was not designed in a lab, despite the conspiracies entertained by the White House.
Research published in Nature Microbiology on Monday shed more light on the true animal origin of the coronavirus. The researchers, led by Maciej Boni, PhD, of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, reconstructed the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 by looking closely at its genome as well as that of closely related viruses. They wanted to know where on the virus evolutionary tree SARS-CoV-2 branched off. Whatever virus it stemmed from would tell them what animal it originated in.
The succinct summary of the paper by MIT Technology Review reporter Neel Patel on Twitter is hard to top: “It’s bats, you guys. It came from bats.”
