The recency and geographical origins of the bat viruses ancestral to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2
The emergence of SARS-CoV in 2002 and SARS-CoV-2 in 2019 led to increased sampling of sarbecoviruses circulating in horseshoe bats. Employing phylogenetic inference while accounting for recombination of bat sarbecoviruses, we find that the closest-inferred bat virus ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 existed less than a decade prior to their emergence in humans. Phylogeographic analyses show bat sarbecoviruses traveled at rates approximating their horseshoe bat hosts and circulated in Asia for millennia. We find that the direct ancestors of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 are unlikely to have reached their respective sites of emergence via dispersal in the bat reservoir alone, supporting interactions with intermediate hosts through wildlife trade playing a role in zoonotic spillover. These results can guide future sampling efforts and demonstrate that viral genomic regions extremely closely related to SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 were circulating in horseshoe bats, confirming their importance as the reservoir species for SARS viruses.
Authors
- Mahan Ghafari (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4123-3287)
- Michael Worobey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3578-1367)
- Joseph Hughes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2556-2563)
- Spyros Lytras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4202-6682)
- Philippe Lemey (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2826-5353)
- Marc A. Suchard (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9818-479X)
- Edyth Parker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8312-1446)
- Jennifer L. Havens (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3095-5900)
- Aris Katzourakis (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3328-6204)
- Andrew F. Magee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7403-5455)
- Tetyana I. Vasylyeva (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9736-7022)
- Simon Dellicour (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9558-1052)
- Jonathan E. Pekar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0977-2886)
- Joel O. Wertheim (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4882-5856)
- Xiang Ji (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7243-0865)
- David L. Robertson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6338-0221)
- Andrew Rambaut (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4337-3707)
- Alice C. Hughes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4899-3158)
- Yu Wang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6351-6467)
Institutions
- Tulane University (US)
- Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)
- University of Arizona (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Rega Institute for Medical Research (BE)
- Redeemer's University (NG)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- MRC University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research (GB)
- University of Hong Kong (HK)
- Medical Research Council (GB)
- University of Edinburgh (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Cell
- Published
- 2025-05-07
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2025.03.035
- Citations
- 16
- Primary Topic
- SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 20.94