Research

[Nature]Identifying SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins

Nature, 26 Mar 2020

Tommy Tsan-Yuk Lam, Marcus Ho-Hin Shum, Hua-Chen Zhu, Yi-Gang Tong, Xue-Bing Ni, Yun-Shi Liao, Wei Wei, William Yiu-Man Cheung, Wen-Juan Li, Lian-Feng Li, Gabriel M. Leung, Edward C. Holmes, Yan-Ling Hu & Yi Guan

Identifying SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins
Pangolins, a mammalian mystery. Photo: Marcus Chua

Highlights:

  • Scientists report the identification of SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses in Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) seized in anti-smuggling operations in southern China.
  • Research team received frozen tissue (lungs, intestine, blood) samples collected from 18 Malayan pangolins (Manis javanica) during August 2017-January 2018. These pangolins were obtained during anti-smuggling operations performed by Guangxi Customs. Strikingly, high-throughput sequencing of their RNA revealed the presence of coronaviruses in six (two lung, two intestine, one lung-intestine mix, one blood from five individual pangolins; Extended Data Table 1) of 43 samples.
  • Researchers conducted further qPCR testing on another batch of archived pangolin samples collected between May-July 2018. Among the 19 samples (nine intestine tissues, ten lung tissues) tested from 12 animals, three lung tissue samples from three individual pangolins were coronavirus positive.
  • Though the epidemiology, pathogenicity, interspecies infectivity and transmissibility of coronaviruses in pangolins remains to be studied, the data presented here strongly suggests that handling these animals requires considerable caution, and that their sale in wet markets should be strictly prohibited.

Full text

This is an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication.

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