where do coronaviruses come from?

Coronaviruses are widespread in the environment and exist in a large range of hosts, including humans, dogs, cats, mice, cattle, swine, turkeys, and chickens, and may also be present in rats and rabbits. The dominant mode of coronavirus transmission is uncertain. Coronaviruses are usually transmitted through contact with infected carrier animals who act as vectors for the virus without becoming ill themselves or contact with surfaces or body fluids contaminated with the virus. Depending on environmental conditions, the virus can survive minutes to hours on exposed surfaces or within discharged fluids.

The Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. However, so far, there are still controversies about the source of the virus and its intermediate host. Here, we found the novel coronavirus was closely related to coronaviruses derived from five wild animals, including Paguma larvata, Paradoxurus hermaphroditus, Civet, Aselliscus stoliczkanus and Rhinolophus sinicus, and was in the same branch of the phylogenetic tree. However, genome and ORF1a homology show that the virus is not the same coronavirus as the coronavirus derived from these five animals, whereas the virus has the highest homology with Bat coronavirus isolate RaTG13.

To date, a large number of studies have proved the pathogen of COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus, which belongs to the Coronavirus family, Betacoronavirus genus and Sarbecovirus subgenus, with a linear single-stranded positive-strand RNA genome of about 30 kb. However, so far, there are still controversies about the source of the virus and its intermediate host.

 "This new study is make by acknowledge support from Division of Clinical Microbiology,University of Pittsburgh Medical Center"

Other groups suggest that pangolin, mink, snake, turtle may be potential intermediate hosts for the virus, which still need more evidence to be confirmed.

"An increased level of viraldiversity was found in some SARS-CoV-2 infected patients, suggesting that the virus has begun to adapt to the human en-vironment and its genomes have begun to evolve in the population."

In summary, based on these results, we have some thoughts on the

research of the SARS-CoV-2 in the future: the SARS-CoV-2 is closely

related to bat coronavirus RaTG13 but is far from coronavirus isolated

from other species analyzed in this study.

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