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Unlike every single mammal in the world, bats possess two copies of genes that produce antibodies, a new study has found.
\n | Photo Credit: CreativeNature_nl<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s only winged mammals, nocturnal bats, of which there are some 1,500 species globally, have never quite got great press. Superstition has them down as bad omens. And science implicates them as the possible origins of the COVID 19 pandemic that killed seven million people globally, and in the outbreak of several other zoonotic diseases (that is, diseases that hop between animals and humans), including SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) in China, MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus) in Saudi Arabia, Ebola in Africa, and Nipah in India.<\/p>\n
So how do these animals, that have catalysed sweeping disease outbreaks among people around the world, not fall sick from the viruses they carry and transmit? Now a new paper in\u00a0Science Advances\u00a0untangles this conundrum.<\/p>\n
Researchers studied the world\u2019s largest family of bats, and found that they, unlike every single mammal in the world, possess two copies of genes\u00a0that\u00a0produce antibodies (proteins that help the immune system fend infections), and not just one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve never seen anything like this in a mammal before,\u201d said Hannah Frank, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Tulane University author of the study, in a release. This completely changes our understanding of mammalian immune systems "and raises exciting new questions about why bats have been so evolutionarily successful and how they respond to viruses,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n