TY - JOUR
AU - Pekar, Jonathan E.
AU - Lytras, Spyros
AU - Ghafari, Mahan
AU - Magee, Andrew F.
AU - Parker, Edyth
AU - Wang, Yu
AU - Ji, Xiang
AU - Havens, Jennifer L.
AU - Katzourakis, Aris
AU - Vasylyeva, Tetyana I.
AU - Suchard, Marc A.
AU - Hughes, Alice C.
AU - Hughes, Joseph
AU - Rambaut, Andrew
AU - Robertson, David L.
AU - Dellicour, Simon
AU - Worobey, Michael
AU - Wertheim, Joel O.
AU - Lemey, Philippe
PY - 2025
DA - May
TI - The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2
JO - Cell
EP - 3183
VL - 188
IS - 12
DO - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.03.035
AB - Summary The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. Employing phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 existed less than a decade prior to their emergence in humans. Phylogeographic analyses show bat sarbecoviruses traveled at rates approximating their horseshoe bat hosts and circulated in Asia for millennia. We find that the direct ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to have reached their respective sites of emergence via dispersal in the bat reservoir alone, supporting interactions with intermediate hosts through wildlife trade playing a role in zoonotic spillover. These results can guide future sampling efforts and demonstrate that viral genomic regions extremely closely related to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 were circulating in horseshoe bats, confirming their importance as the reservoir species for SARS viruses.
PB - Elsevier
UR - https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/0319f013-6906-487d-a42a-15fd5d510d5e
KW - Coronavirus (COVID-19)
ER