Bats as animal reservoirs for the SARS coronavirus: Hypothesis proved after 10 years of virus hunting

Recently, the team led by Dr. Zhengli Shi from Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Dr. Peter Daszak from Ecohealth Alliance identified SL-CoVs in Chinese horseshoe bats that were 95% identical to human SARS-CoV and were able to use human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor for docking and entry. Remarkably, they isolated the first known live bat SL-CoV that replicates in human and related cells. Their findings provide clear evidence that some SL-CoVs circulating in bats are capable of infecting and replicating in human (Ge X Y, et al., 2013).