Laos Caves Harbor bats are the closest relatives of the Covid-19 virus

Bats living in limestone caves in northern Laos have been found to carry coronaviruses that share a key characteristic with SARS-CoV-2, bringing scientists closer to identifying the cause of Covid-19.

Researchers from the Institut Pasteur de France and the University of Laos have looked for viruses similar to the one that causes Covid in hundreds of horseshoe bats. They found three with closely matched receptor binding domains – the part of the coronavirus spike protein used to bind to human ACE-2, the enzyme it targets to cause infection.