Broad Host Range of SARS-CoV-2 Predicted by Comparative and Structural Analysis of ACE2 in Vertebrates

Joana Damas; Graham M. Hughes; Kathleen C. Keough; Corrie A. Painter; Nicole S. Persky; Marco Corbo; Michael Hiller; Klaus-Peter Koepfli; Andreas R. Pfenning; Huabin Zhao; Diane P. Genereux; Ross Swofford; Katherine S. Pollard; Oliver A. Ryder; Martin T. Nweeia; Kerstin Lindblad-Toh; Emma C. Teeling; Elinor K. Karlsson; Harris A. Lewin

CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.04.16.045302 doi: bioRxiv preprint susceptible to infection based on the features of their ACE2 residues, pathological outcomes may be very different among species depending on other mechanisms that could affect virus replication and spread to target cells, tissues, and organs within the host. Furthermore, we cannot exclude the possibility that infection in any species occurs via another cellular receptor, as has been shown for other betacoronaviruses. Nonetheless, our predictions provide a useful starting point for selection of appropriate animal models for COVID-19 research and for identification of species that may be at risk for human-to-animal or animal-to-animal transmissions by SARS-CoV-2. The approach we used for ACE2