Bats’ immune defenses may be why their viruses can be so deadly to people
When it comes to viruses, ones from bats are weirdly deadly — at least to humans. The mammals can carry many viruses with the potential to cause serious diseases in people, including rabies, Ebola, Nipah, severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and others. Bats rarely get sick from those viruses. Why these pathogens tend to be so dangerous when they infect other animals has been a mystery. Previous work suggests that a bat’s immune system is especially adapted to tolerate viruses, thanks in part to its ability to limit inflammation. Now a study using cells grown in a lab hints that to counter a bat’s immune defenses, these viruses have gotten good at spreading rapidly from cell to cell. That means that when they get into animals without a similarly strong immune system, the viruses are particularly adept at causing serious damage, researchers report February 3 in eLife. The study is “an important piece of the puzzle in understanding why viruses [from...