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

基本信息

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

项目摘要

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.

我们所有人都受到了 COVID-19 大流行的影响，这种病毒是由最初从动物（可能是蝙蝠）传染给人类的病毒（严格来说是 SARS-CoV-2）引起的。现在该病毒正在人与人之间直接传播。COVID-19 是一种冠状病毒，冠状病毒在野生动物中非常常见。虽然每种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，总体观点是，动物是病毒的“储存库”，有时会转移到人类身上。由于很多人感染了 COVID-19，我们认为人类现在可能是感染动物的病毒储存库。如果这种情况确实发生，最有可能发生在人口和动物密度较高的地方，例如城市中的啮齿动物，大量人和啮齿动物毗邻居住。这是我们想要测试的想法。但这为什么重要呢？不同的病毒也可以混合它们的基因（从技术上讲是重组），因此我们也想知道人类 COVID-19 是否确实会感染啮齿动物，以及它是否会与这些啮齿动物体内已有的其他冠状病毒重组。最后几句话中有很多“如果”，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“如果”——是否正确。为此，我们希望捕获居住在城市的大鼠和小鼠，然后对它们进行人类 COVID-19 病毒或其近亲病毒的筛查。