The sale of wild animals at a seafood market in Wuhan, China, was suspected to be the source of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak. While bats were thought to be the likely carriers of the novel 2019 coronavirus, Dr Tommy Lam and his team discovered that pangolins, scaly-skinned animals native to Asia, also called ‘scaly anteaters’, may actually be the animals transmitting this virus to humans. They proved this by extracting the genes of coronavirus isolated in pangolins, seized from anti-smuggling operations.
Key takeaways from the study:
- Up to 92% of these genes were similar to SARS-CoV-2, meaning the coronaviruses in humans and pangolins had a very similar genetic fingerprint.
- Interestingly, both viruses had around 97% similarity in the part of the virus structure that enables it to enter cells.
The study concluded that pangolins were identified carriers of a coronavirus that was highly related to the human SARS-CoV-2. These results suggested that pangolins may be involved in the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to humans. As such, these animals should be removed from wet markets to prevent the risk of animal-to-human transmission. Respiratory specimens from wild pangolins in China and Southeast Asia should be sampled regularly to detect for coronavirus and to understand their role in human transmission.
To read the original article published in Nature, click here.
