The exposure of urban rodents to the human COVID-19 virus and the potential for viral recombination

城市啮齿动物接触人类 COVID-19 病毒以及病毒重组的可能性

• 批准号: NE/V009028/1
• 负责人: Mark Viney
• 金额: $ 21.7万
• 依托单位: University of Liverpool
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FV009028%2F1
• 关键词: exposure; urban; rodents; human; COVID

All of us are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is caused by a virus (technically, SARS-CoV-2) that originally jumped from an animal (probably a bat) into a person. Now the virus is spreading person-to-person directly.COVID-19 is a coronavirus, and coronaviruses are very common in wild animals. While each coronavirus typically infects one species of animal, coronaviruses can move between animal species too. So the general idea is that animals are "reservoirs" of viruses that sometimes moves into people.Because so many people are getting infected with COVID-19, we think that humans might now be a virus reservoir infecting animals. If this does happen, it's most likely where there are high densities of people and of animals - such as rodents in cities, where large numbers of people and rodents live cheek-by-jowl. This is the idea we want to test.But why does this matter? Different viruses can also mix their genetics (technically, recombine), and so we also wonder if the human COVID-19 does infect rodents, whether it will then recombine with other coronaviruses already in those rodents. There are a lots of 'ifs' in these last few sentences, which is because these are just theories that we have. We now want to see if these theories - these 'ifs' - are correct. To do this we want to catch city-dwelling rats and mice that we'll then screen for the human COVID-19 virus, or close relatives of it.

我们所有人都受到新冠肺炎疫情的影响，这种疫情是由一种最初从动物(可能是蝙蝠)传染给人的病毒(严格意义上讲，是SARS-CoV-2)引起的。现在病毒直接在人与人之间传播，冠状病毒是一种冠状病毒，冠状病毒在野生动物中非常常见。虽然每个冠状病毒通常感染一种动物，但冠状病毒也可以在动物物种之间传播。因此，一般的观点是，动物是病毒的“蓄水池”，病毒有时会进入人体内。由于如此多的人感染新冠肺炎，我们认为人类现在可能是感染动物的病毒库。如果真的发生这种情况，很可能是在人和动物密度高的地方--比如城市里的啮齿动物，那里有大量的人和啮齿动物紧挨着住在一起。这就是我们想要测试的想法。但这有什么关系呢？不同的病毒也可以混合它们的基因(从技术上讲，重新组合)，所以我们也想知道人类新冠肺炎是否真的会感染啮齿动物，然后它是否会与这些啮齿动物身上已经存在的其他冠状病毒重新结合。在最后几句话中有很多‘如果’，这是因为这些只是我们拥有的理论。我们现在想看看这些理论--这些假设--是否正确。为了做到这一点，我们想要捕获居住在城市的老鼠，然后我们将对人类新冠肺炎病毒或其近亲进行筛查。

项目成果

The ecology of viruses in urban rodents with a focus on SARS-CoV-2.

• DOI: 10.1080/22221751.2023.2217940
• 发表时间: 2023-12
• 期刊: Emerging microbes & infections
• 影响因子: 13.2