Even new COVID variants ‘are still transmissible between humans and bats’

Ever since the virus which causes COVID-19 first transmitted from bats to humans in December 2019, it has evolved, but it could still transmit between species, a new study has shown.

The study was conducted using high-performance computing, as it’s too dangerous to deliberately infect bats.

It showed that even newer variants such as Omicron can still transmit between species.

The computer simulations showed the coronaviruses use their spike proteins to attach themselves to the host cells in both bats and humans in much the same way.

Associate Professor Gregory Babbitt, of the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), said, "We were hoping to see really cool adaptive evolution happening as the virus got more used to humans and less used to bats, but we actually saw that there wasn't a whole lot of change.”

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The researchers studied how the viral spike proteins in several SARS-CoV-2 variants interact with the host cell receptors known as ACE2 in both humans and various bats of genus Rhinolophus.

The researchers warn that this means the virus could easily transmit from humans to bats.

"Because this binding site has not evolved very much, there's really not much stopping it from transmitting from humans to bats,” Babbitt says.

“If you look at the phylogenetic relationships of bats to humans, we're pretty far apart on the mammalian tree. So it suggests that there would be pretty widespread cross-species infectivity, and the literature has shown there's been a lot of evidence of that."

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The scientists used a computer simulation method called molecular dynamics to put proteins in a simulation and then watch them move.

The approach uses high performance computing on graphics processors to show what every atom does over time. Babbitt said this approach allows scientists to study questions that cannot be answered in a traditional laboratory.

Babbitt says, "It would be dangerous to do experiments where we reinfected bats with human viral strains, so our computer-based simulations offered a much safer alternative.”

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