Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2006 Dec;12(12):1834-40.
doi: 10.3201/eid1212.060401.

Review of bats and SARS

Lin-Fa Wang  1 , Zhengli Shi, Shuyi Zhang, Hume Field, Peter Daszak, Bryan T Eaton
Affiliations
Review

Review of bats and SARS

Lin-Fa Wang et al. Emerg Infect Dis. 2006 Dec.

Abstract

Bats have been identified as a natural reservoir for an increasing number of emerging zoonotic viruses, including henipaviruses and variants of rabies viruses. Recently, we and another group independently identified several horseshoe bat species (genus Rhinolophus) as the reservoir host for a large number of viruses that have a close genetic relationship with the coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Our current research focused on the identification of the reservoir species for the progenitor virus of the SARS coronaviruses responsible for outbreaks during 2002-2003 and 2003-2004. In addition to SARS-like coronaviruses, many other novel bat coronaviruses, which belong to groups 1 and 2 of the 3 existing coronavirus groups, have been detected by PCR. The discovery of bat SARS-like coronaviruses and the great genetic diversity of coronaviruses in bats have shed new light on the origin and transmission of SARS coronaviruses.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure
Figure
A) Genome diagram indicating the location of structural (dark arrow) and nonstructural (shaded arrow) genes and the different regions (shaded boxes) used for phylogeny analysis. B) Phylogenetic trees based on deduced amino acid sequences of the spike protein S1 domain (a), the open reading frame (ORF)10' (b), and the N protein (c). Because of lack of the ORF10' coding region in Tor2, Tor2 could not be included for the tree in (b). GD01, human isolate from early phase of the outbreak in 2003; Tor2, human isolate from late phase of the outbreak in 2003; SZ3, civet isolate from March 2003; Rp3, bat isolate from Rhinolophus pearsoni, December 2004; Rf1, bat isolate from R. ferrumequinum, November 2004; Rm1, bat isolate from R. macrotis, November 2004; and HKU3–1, bat isolate from R. sinicus, February 2005. GenBank accession nos. appear next to isolate names.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Peiris JSM, Guan Y, Yuen KY. Severe acute respiratory syndrome. Nat Med. 2004;10:S88–97. 10.1038/nm1143 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Liang G, Chen QX, Xu JG, Liu YF, Lim W, Peiris JSM, et al. Laboratory diagnosis of four recent sporadic cases of community-acquired SARS, Guangdong Province, China. Emerg Infect Dis. 2004;10:1774–81. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Song HD, Tu CC, Zhang GW, Wang SY, Zheng K, Lei LC, et al. Cross-host evolution of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus in palm civet and human. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102:2430–5. 10.1073/pnas.0409608102 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Rota PA, Oberste MS, Monroe SS, Nix WA, Campagnoli R, Icenogle JP, et al. Characterization of a novel coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome. Science. 2003;300:1394–9. 10.1126/science.1085952 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Marra MA, Jones SJ, Astell CR, Holt RA, Brooks-Wilson A, Butterfield YS, et al. The genome sequence of the SARS-associated coronavirus. Science. 2003;300:1399–404. 10.1126/science.1085953 - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

MeSH terms