Some of the new coronavirus variants can cause COVID-19 in mice, researchers have found.
\nThe implications, such as whether mice could then transmit the virus to humans, will require further study, they said. The original virus strain identified in Wuhan, China, could not produce illness in mice because the spikes on its surface could not bind well to the ACE2 receptor protein on the animals\u2019 cells.Some of the new concerning variants \u2013 particularly the ones first identified in South Africa and Brazil \u2013 have mutations that overcome this challenge, giving them the ability to infect and sicken the mice, researchers reported on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review.\u201cThis is indeed great news for animal studies to better understand the infection and disease as mice are widely available \u2026 to study many pathologies, and easier to work with than larger animals such as hamster or ferret,\u201d said coauthor Etienne Simon-Loriere of Institut Pasteur in Paris.Whether mice can transmit the virus to each other or to humans remains to be determined. \u201cWe do not have expertise to evaluate the health risk posed by this newly acquired capacity of SARS-CoV-2, but this is definitely something that will need to be done,\u201d Simon-Loriere said.\u201cNo one wants the virus to move to a new reservoir from where it could come back to humans, as was feared with mink farms, and hopefully it will not happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Some of the new coronavirus variants can cause COVID-19 in mice, researchers have found. The implications, such as whether mice could then transmit the virus to humans, will require further study, they said. The original virus strain identified in Wuhan, China, could not produce illness in mice because the spikes on its surface could not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest_news","category-national","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n