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Humans have never been regarded as virus sources, and virus transmission from humans to animals has gotten far less attention, according to a study of viral genomes conducted by researchers at the University College London.
Lead author Cedric Tan, a doctoral student at the Genetics Institute and Francis Crick Institute at UCL, stated, “When animals catch viruses from humans, this can not only harm the animal and potentially pose a conservation threat to the species, but it may also cause new problems for humans by impacting food security if large numbers of livestock need to be culled to prevent an epidemic, as has been happening over recent years with the H5N1 bird flu strain.”
Tan added, “Additionally, if a virus carried by humans infects a new animal species, the virus might continue to thrive even if eradicated among humans, or even evolve new adaptations before it winds up infecting humans again. Understanding how and why viruses evolve to jump into different hosts across the wider tree of life may help us figure out how new viral diseases emerge in humans and animals.”
The researchers analysed almost 12 million viral genomes for the study, which was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, using methodological tools.
They also used the data to recreate the evolutionary histories and past host jumps of viruses from 32 viral families to look for viral genomes that had undergone mutations during host jumps.
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