Viral CpG Deficiency Provides No Evidence That Dogs Were Intermediate Hosts for SARS-CoV-2
Viral CpG Deficiency Provides No Evidence That Dogs Were Intermediate Hosts for SARS-CoV-2
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DOI：
10.1093/molbev/msaa178
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发表时间：
2020-09-01
影响因子：
10.7
通讯作者：
Goldstein, Richard A.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Pollock, David D.;Castoe, Todd A.;Goldstein, Richard A.
由于COVID-19大流行的范围和影响，人们强烈希望了解SARS-CoV 2病毒的来源以及它如何跨越物种界限到达人类。分子进化分析可以通过建立病毒的相关性和分歧时间以及识别过去的选择压力来追踪病毒的起源。然而，我们必须坚持严格的推理和解释标准，因为错误的后果。在这里，我们对夏（2020）的结论提出异议。SARS-CoV-2基因组CpG缺失与宿主抗病毒防御的逃避Mol Biol Evol. doi：10.1093/molbev/masa 095），狗可能是SARS-CoV-2祖先的中间宿主。我们强调了夏的推理过程和他对CpG缺陷的分析中的主要缺陷，并得出结论，没有直接证据表明狗作为中间宿主的作用。蝙蝠和穿山甲目前作为SARS-CoV-2的祖先宿主得到了最大的支持，但强烈警告说，对冠状病毒的野生动物物种取样有限。
Due to the scope and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic there exists a strong desire to understand where the SARS-CoV2 virus came from and how it jumped species boundaries to humans. Molecular evolutionary analyses can trace viral origins by establishing relatedness and divergence times of viruses and identifying past selective pressures. However, we must uphold rigorous standards of inference and interpretation on this topic because of the ramifications of being wrong. Here, we dispute the conclusions of Xia (2020. Extreme genomic CpG deficiency in SARS-CoV-2 and evasion of host antiviral defense. Mol Biol Evol. doi:10.1093/molbev/masa095) that dogs are a likely intermediate host of a SARS-CoV-2 ancestor. We highlight major flaws in Xia's inference process and his analysis of CpG deficiencies, and conclude that there is no direct evidence for the role of dogs as intermediate hosts. Bats and pangolins currently have the greatest support as ancestral hosts of SARS-CoV-2, with the strong caveat that sampling of wildlife species for coronaviruses has been limited.