Viral evolution in animals could reveal future of Covid-19

When animals catch Covid-19 from humans, new SARSCoV-2 variants can arise. To evaluate this phenomenon, an interdisciplinary team at the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences systematically analysed mutation types occurring in the virus after infection of cats, dogs, ferrets, and hamsters.

The study was recently published in 'PNAS', the official journal of the National Academy of Sciences. Confirmed Covid-19 cases in a variety of wild, zoo, and household animals demonstrate crossspecies transmission, which is a rare occurrence for most viruses. “SARS-CoV-2, in the realm of coronaviruses, has a very broad species range,” said Laura Bashor, one of the first authors and a doctoral student in the Department of Microbiology,

Immunology and Pathology. “Generally speaking, many types of viruses can't infect other species of animals, they evolved to be very specific.” “Humans have so much exposure to many different animals which permitted this virus to have the opportunity to expose a variety of different species,” said Erick Gagne, a first author and now an assistant professor of wildlife disease ecology at the University of Pennsylvania. The global reach and spillover of the virus have given researchers a unique opportunity to investigate the viral evolution of SARS-CoV-2, including in University Distinguished Professor Sue Vande Woude’s laboratory at Colorado State University.

These specialists in disease transmission in wild and domestic cats applied their experience in sequence analysis and studying a collection of genomes to SARS-CoV-2.