The closest relative of the corona pathogen to date is detected in Laos.
Experts are now checking whether the virus was transmitted from animals to humans.
Kassel - In Laos, researchers have discovered other forms of the coronavirus.
A total of three different species were found in bats in caves.
This finding supports the thesis that the virus could have been transmitted from animals to humans.
As Spiegel reports, the Corona * types found are almost identical to Sars-CoV-2.
Experts interpret this as an indication that the virus originated naturally and not artificially.
However, the origin of the virus that causes the disease has not yet been clarified.
However, some experts assume that Corona broke out in a laboratory.
Laos: Corona researchers find similar pathogens in animals
There is now much to suggest that the corona pathogen actually passed from bats or subsequently via another animal to humans.
In order to get to the bottom of this assumption, researchers from all over the world took saliva, feces and urine samples from more than 600 bats in Laos.
They found viruses in three species of horseshoe bat bats whose genetic makeup is particularly similar to that of Sars-CoV-2.
There is a genetic match of 96.8 percent.
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Are animals the vectors?
In Laos, researchers have discovered three new corona pathogens in bats that are particularly similar to Sars-CoV-2.
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© T. Douma / Imago
But the pathogens are also similar in other areas - including the receptor binding sites.
With the help of these, the viruses penetrate the host cells and can thus multiply and spread further.
These places have a particularly strong resemblance.
According to the study, the binding domains of the Covid pathogen and the newly discovered types also have common characteristics.
With it, the virus can dock onto human cells and infect them.
Where the coronavirus got its so-called furin cleavage site, however, remains a mystery.
These significantly increase the ability of the viruses to penetrate human cells.
But researchers first want to use animal models to find out whether the new pathogens trigger symptoms and disease courses similar to those after a Covid infection.
Corona: Was Sars-CoV-2 transmitted from the animal?
- Experts express a guess
According to experts, other human infectious diseases speak in favor of the thesis that corona was transmitted from animals to humans.
Among other things, this is the case with HIV, rabies, plague, malaria or Ebola.
The Sars virus, newly discovered in southern China in 2002, which led to an epidemic there, is also believed to have come from an animal.
Researchers at the University of Kassel have now found that electrical voltage can help in the fight against the corona pandemic *.
Southeast Asia in particular has long been the site of countless corona viruses.
Raw game meat is sold in markets there and then consumed.
In this way, people often come into contact with the pathogen causing the highly contagious flu virus.
Experts assume that before the Covid outbreak in winter 2019 in Wuhan in southern China or in neighboring Laos, some precursors of the virus could have been in circulation.
(Alina Schröder)
* hna.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.
