Learning from Bats

Some very serious human viruses have their origins within bats. These include SARS and MERS viruses, viruses part of the Coronaviriade famaily, as well as Ebola Virus, and Nipah Virus. While these viruses cause much damage in human hosts, bats are able to survive after infections with these viruses for a very long time.

A team lead by Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore sought to study the mechanism behind bat's ability to host deadly viruses without becoming sick. The secret, they discovered, lies not in what bats can do that human cannot, but rather in what they do not do. The NLRP3 protein in humans and many other mammals is crucial in triggering inflammatory responses to infection. However, in bats, the NLRP3 protein has significantly reduced activity than that of its human counterparts. Further examination of differing species of bats revealed that this protein variant has been conserved across evolution and seems to be bat specific.

When properly regulated, inflammation helps reduce infection, but excessive inflammation has been observed to lead to increased damage caused by infectious disease and increased rates of aging. Bats, thus do not have increased immune response, but rather higher tolerance towards viral infection and less drastic inflammatory pathways to combat these infections.

This discovery has implications in the treatment of human disease by switching focus from specific antigen targeting to a more general disease prevention method.

The full story can be found at Duke-NUS Medical School. (2019, February 26). The secret to bats' immunity. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 26, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190226112401.htm

-Angela Wang