“Our strategy begins by a complete inventory of bats and their SARSr-CoVs at our intervention test site cave complex in Yunnan, China that harbours bats with high-risk SARSr-CoVs. We will collect data from three caves in that system (one is our intervention test site and two control sites) on: monthly bat abundance and diversity, viral prevalence and diversity, individual bat viral load and host physiological markers; and genomic characterization of low- and high-risk SARSr-CoV strains among bat species, sexes, and age classes; satellite telemetry and mark-recapture data on bat home range and inter-cave movement; and monitoring of daily, weekly and seasonal changes in bat populations.” (D1, p.5)
“However, our test cave site in Yunnan Province, harbours a quasispecies (QS) population assemblage that contains all the genetic components of epidemic SARS-CoV34, We have isolated three strains there (WIV1, WIV16 and SHCO14) that unlike other SARSr-CoVs, do not contain two deletions in the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike, have far higher sequence identity to SARS-CoV (Fig. 1), use human ACE2 receptor for cell entry, as SARS-CoV does (Fig. 2), and replicate efficiently in various animal and human cells.” (D1, p.7-8)
Lovely.