Publications tagged "cross-species transmission"

A large number of publications have shown suprisingly accurate predictions of which species are susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection using just the variation in ACE2 proteins found in different species. This would seem to imply that receptor-binding is the primary barrier to cross-species transmission for this virus. However, we show that the predictive power of ACE2-based models derives from strong correlations with host phylogeny rather than processes which can be mechanistically linked to infection biology. Further, biased availability of ACE2 sequences leads to misleading projections of the number and geographic distribution of at-risk species. Models based on host phylogeny reduce this bias, but identify a very large number of susceptible species, implying that model predictions must be combined with local knowledge of exposure risk to practically guide surveillance. More

Why most cross-species transmissions fail to establish ongoing transmission in the newly infected species remains poorly understood. Examining cross-species inoculations involving rabies, we show that mismatches in virulence which are predictable from host and viral factors make sustained transmission in the novel host less likely. These mechanistic insights help to explain and predict host shift events and highlight meta-analyses of existing experimental inoculation data as a powerful and generalisable approach for understanding the dynamics of index infections in novel species. More

Rabies virus persists in species-specific cycles that rarely sustain transmission in alternative species. The determinants of these species-associations and the adaptive significance of genetic divergence between host-associated virus lineages are poorly understood. This review assesses various lines of evidence and proposes a synthetic hypothesis for the respective roles of ecology and evolution in rabies virus host shifts. More