According to a study published in PLOS Computational Biology, some ancestor rodents probably could have repeatedly infected with SARS-like coronaviruses and acquired later resistance to them. The authors of the work, scientists from Princeton University (USA), are called modern rodents with a natural reservoir for unknown science of viruses, potentially capable of causing dangerous respiratory diseases in humans.
SARS-COV-2, the COVID-19 causative agent, has zoonotic origins, that is, it was originally circulated among animals, but then learned to infect a person. Previous studies have shown that Chinese horseshoe bats are the owners of numerous SARS-like viruses, while they do not manifest strong symptoms of diseases. The detection of other potential coronavirus carriers having resistance to pathogens is important for preventing the transition of new pathogens per person.
Scientists have a search for ACE2 receptors among many mammalian species. Ace2, located on the cell surface, is used by coronavirus SARS-COV-2 for attaching and subsequent penetration into the cells. It turned out that primates there are conservatives (little varying with evolution) amino acid sequences in those areas of ACE2, which are associated with coronavirus. However, rodents have these sections, on the contrary, differ in high diversity, which can contribute to high speed of the evolution of SARS-like viruses.