ABOVE: A golden Syrian hamster
© ISTOCK.COM, 4KODIAK
Earlier this year, as transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic, started to pick up speed, researchers around the world hurried to find model systems that could provide insight into disease spread, host immune responses, and possible treatments.
“When the pandemic first started, nobody really knew what was going to be the best model,” says Amanda Martinot, a veterinary pathologist at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine.
The most widely available candidates were mice, which are easily housed and so well-researched that there are tons of tools available for studying nearly every aspect of their biology. But as researchers suspected, based on previous incompatibility of mice and other coronaviruses, the animals present challenges when it comes to studying SARS-CoV-2. The virus uses a human receptor called ACE2 to get into cells, but mouse ACE2 is different enough that the virus doesn’t ...
