Taking a saliva sample from the world's largest bat is not easy under ordinary circumstances, but obtaining that same sample from a SARS-infected flying fox — while using a 4-foot cotton swab and wearing a pressurized biosafety suit with double-layered rubber gloves — can be downright infuriating. "There comes a point where you just have to say 'that's enough,'" says Gary Crameri, a technician at the Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) in Geelong, about an hour's drive south of Melbourne.
When I visit him in late November, Crameri had just exposed half a dozen flying foxes to the virus that causes SARS. The hope is that this tricky experiment will shed light on a molecular receptor that SARS seems to be using to get inside cells. If this hunch about receptors is correct, then knowing which bats possess the susceptible receptor could guide the ongoing hunt for the pathogen's reservoir ...
