The battle against SARS and MERS coronaviruses: Reservoirs and Animal Models

Gong, Shu-ran; Bao, Lin-lin

During the SARS outbreak, masked palm civet cats (Paguma larvata) and raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) were found to carry SARS-like viruses, even before the virus was discovered in lesser bamboo bats (Tylonycteris pachypusa and Pipistrellus). 10 At the same time, wild animal sellers were found to possess higher than average relevant neutralizing antibodies. 11 Initial phylogenetic analyses reveal that the SARS-CoVs in civets and humans actually come from two distant branches, but the SARS-CoV from civets during the incipient phase of the epidemic had 99.8% sequence similarity to the human SARS-CoV. 12 Until recently, it was thought that civets were the immediate zoonotic source of SARS-CoV in the Guangdong SARS outbreak.