Comparative tropism profiling of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV in mammals

Exploring wild reservoirs of SARS-CoV-2 is critical to long-term control and prediction of the future scenarios of COVID-19, which is limited by inadequate information about the susceptible host range. Here, we performed a comparative in vitro infection analysis of 83 cell cultures derived from 55 mammals using pseudotyped viruses bearing S proteins from SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV.

We found cell cultures from Thomas's horseshoe bat and king horseshoe bat are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV pseudotyped viruses. Moreover, five mutations (del69-70, D80Y, S98F, T572I, and Q675H) were found to significantly affect the host tropism of SARS-CoV-2. Examination of the phylogenetic signals of transduction rates reveals that closely-related taxa generally have similar susceptibility to MERS-CoV, but not SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 pseudotyped viruses.