TWiV 876: Spillover market with Michael Worobey
Michael Worobey joins TWiV to explain evidence that SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade and that the Huanan market was the unambiguous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Michael Worobey joins TWiV to explain evidence that SARS-CoV-2 emerged via the wildlife trade and that the Huanan market was the unambiguous epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic.
TWiV discusses the virome of game animals in China, and the finding that binding of sarbecoviruses to ACE2 is an ancestral and evolvable trait.
Various SARS-CoV-2 like viruses have been isolated from bats in China, Thailand, and Japan, but none have a spike protein that can bind ACE2 and allow entry into human cells. Sampling of bats in Laos has now revealed the presence of such viruses. The genome of a virus called RaTG13, from Rhinolophus affinis bats in …
This week President Biden received the report he commissioned on the origin of SARS-CoV-2. As I predicted three months ago, nothing was learned, because to find the origin of the virus it is necessary to conduct extensive wildlife surveys. Consequently this week I would rather write about a new study that identified coronaviruses in rodents. …
Recently isolated coronaviruses from humans in Haiti and Malaysia appear to have originated in pigs and dogs.
After SARS-Cov came and went in 2003, we learned that bats in China harbor SARS-like coronaviruses with the capacity to infect human cells. This information was largely ignored, otherwise we would have stopped this pandemic in its tracks. A coronavirus that went from bats to pigs might represent yet another threat to human health. Swine …
We missed SARS-CoV-2, what other coronaviruses are we ignoring? Read More »