TY - JOUR AU - Wang, Lin-Fa AU - Shi, Zhengli AU - Zhang, Shuyi AU - Field, Hume AU - Daszak, Peter AU - Eaton, Bryan T. T1 - Review of Bats and SARS T2 - Emerging Infectious Disease journal PY - 2006 VL - 12 IS - 12 SP - 1834 SN - 1080-6059 AB - Bats have been identified as a natural reservoir for an increasing number of emerging zoonotic viruses, including henipaviruses and variants of rabies viruses. Recently, we and another group independently identified several horseshoe bat species (genus Rhinolophus) as the reservoir host for a large number of viruses that have a close genetic relationship with the coronavirus associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Our current research focused on the identification of the reservoir species for the progenitor virus of the SARS coronaviruses responsible for outbreaks during 2002–2003 and 2003–2004. In addition to SARS-like coronaviruses, many other novel bat coronaviruses, which belong to groups 1 and 2 of the 3 existing coronavirus groups, have been detected by PCR. The discovery of bat SARS-like coronaviruses and the great genetic diversity of coronaviruses in bats have shed new light on the origin and transmission of SARS coronaviruses. KW - emerging zoonoses KW - SARS KW - coronavirus KW - bats KW - animal reservoir KW - spillover KW - synopsis KW - China DO - 10.3201/eid1212.060401 UR - https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/12/12/06-0401_article ER - End of Reference