ABOVE: Cave nectar bat (Eonycteris spelaea)
FENG ZHU
Bats act as reservoirs for lots of viruses—including coronaviruses such as those that cause Middle East respiratory syndrome, severe acute respiratory syndrome, and possibly COVID-19—but they don’t often get sick themselves. How they avoid viral illness has been an open question. Researchers reported in PNAS yesterday (October 26) that various species of bats have slightly different ways of suppressing inflammation, all centered on changes in genes responsible for triggering innate immune responses.
The authors demonstrate a number of the mechanisms in bats that seem to support their capacity to tolerate viruses that make other mammals really sick, says Cara Brook, a postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved in the work. “This follows a series of other publications that really highlight a dampened inflammatory response in bats that suggests that they are uniquely resistant and resilient to the consequences ...
