This could be a "major advance" in the search for the origins of Covid-19: researchers from the Pasteur Institute have identified viruses in northern Laos close to SARS-CoV?

2 in bats, capable of infecting humans.

The conclusions of this work, in open access since Wednesday on the scientific platform "Research Square", have yet to be peer reviewed for publication in a scientific journal.

In order to better understand the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and its origins, researchers from the Institut Pasteur in Paris, the Institut Pasteur in Laos and the National University of Laos carried out at the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 a field mission in the north of the country with different species of bats living in limestone caves.

“The initial idea was to try to identify the origin of this epidemic,” explains Marc Eloit, head of the “discovery of pathogens” laboratory at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.

A virus but not exactly similar

"For various reasons which accumulate, it is suspected that certain insectivorous bats could be the reservoir of the virus". The samples took place in an area that is part of an immense karstic relief, geological formations mainly made up of limestone, which also encompasses northern Vietnam and southern China. "Laos shares this common territory with southern China, filled with cavities where bats live, hence the idea of ​​going there", continues Marc Eloit. Because what happens there is representative of this ecosystem.

Conclusions of the Institut Pasteur analyzes: the virus sequences found in bats are almost identical to those of SARS-CoV-2 and the researchers have been able to demonstrate their ability to allow viruses to enter human cells.

However, the viruses studied lacked the "furin site" present in SARS-CoV-2, a function that activates the so-called Spike protein by allowing the virus to better enter human cells and whose existence conditions the power. pathogen of the virus.

"A major breakthrough"

Several hypotheses could explain this missing link, argues Marc Eloit.

“Perhaps a non-pathogenic virus first circulated in humans before mutating,” he emphasizes, for example.

"Or a virus very close to the viruses identified has this furin site, but we have not yet found it".

Another question: "how did the bat virus found in caves get to Wuhan", in China, the known starting point of the pandemic, 2,000 km away?

No answer for the moment.

Anyway, this study "is in the identification of the origin of SARS-CoV-2", believes Marc Eloit.

The main conclusion of which would be that there are viruses very close to SARS-CoV-2 in bats capable of infecting humans without an intermediate animal, such as the pangolin.

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