Identification of novel bat coronaviruses shed light on the evolutionary origins of SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses

To discover the evolutionary origin of SARS-CoV-2, 411 Rhinolophus bat samples including feces, oral swabs and urine were collected between 2019 and 2020 in China for meta-transcriptomic study to identify novel coronaviruses. Twenty-four full length coronavirus genomes were identified, which include four SARS-CoV-2-related and three SARS-CoV related viruses. Although the most variable region that differs from original SARS-CoV-2 genome is spike gene, the spike gene of a newly identified virus was shown to bind to human ACE2 receptor. The Rhinolophus bat species, which possess SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV-like viruses, are distributed in regions that extend from South Laos and Vietnam to southern China.