China's virus came to humans from snakes

The 2019-nCoV Chinese virus came to humans from snakes: these would be the animals in which the virus, transmitted by bats, would recombine and then pass on to humans. This is indicated by the genetic analysis published in the Journal of Medical Virology by Wei Ji, Wei Wang, Xiaofang Zhao, Junjie Zai, and Xingguang Li, from the universities of Beijing and Guangxi. The research was conducted on samples of the virus from different locations in China and from different host species.

As has happened in the past with avian influenza viruses and Sars, this time too the index is aimed at live animal markets very common in China, where wild animals are sold alongside animals raised on farms and fish, like snakes and bats. "The results of our evolutionary analysis suggest for the first time that the snake is the most likely wild animal reservoir of the 2019-nCoV virus," the researchers write. Genetic analyzes thus add a fundamental piece to the mosaic of the genetic composition of the 2019-nCoV virus, in which up to now only the sequence of the part of virus inherited from bats and identified from the beginning as belonging to the coronavirus family was clearly recognizable which includes the Sars virus, which appeared in 2002, and the Mers virus of 2015; the mystery of where the other half of the virus came from remained to be solved.

Now it is clear that the 2019-nCoV virus is a mix of a coronavirus from bats and one that arrives from snakes and that it would pass on to humans, adapting to the new host and acquiring the ability to transmit from man to man . By genetically recombining in snakes, therefore, the new virus made the so-called 'species jump', acquiring new receptors that allow it to bind to the cells of the human respiratory system. "The new information obtained from our evolutionary analysis - the researchers note - is very important for the control of the epidemic caused by the pneumonia induced by the 2019-nCoV virus".