{"id":113097,"date":"2020-09-16T16:27:03","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T23:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/how-bats-have-outsmarted-viruses-including-coronaviruses-for-65-million-years"},"modified":"2020-09-16T16:27:03","modified_gmt":"2020-09-16T23:27:03","slug":"how-bats-have-outsmarted-viruses-including-coronaviruses-for-65-million-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/how-bats-have-outsmarted-viruses-including-coronaviruses-for-65-million-years","title":{"rendered":"How bats have outsmarted viruses\u2014including coronaviruses\u2014for 65 million years"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-bats-have-outsmarted-viruses-including-coronaviruses-for-65-million-years2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Although the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without experiencing any known symptoms. Now, the newly sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they\u2019ve been outsmarting viruses for 65 million years. The findings are an \u201cexcellent starting point for understanding the superstar immune systems of bats,\u201d says Laurel Yohe, a postdoc at Yale University who studies bat evolution and was not involved with the work. With more than 1400 species, bats are the second most diverse group of mammals on Earth. They live on every continent except Antarctica, and range in size from two to more than 1000 grams. They fly, they echolocate, and some live up to 41 years\u2014a long time for animals of their size. They are also known to carry many different kinds of viruses, including coronaviruses, with no ill effects.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>Newly sequenced genomes reveal the secrets of their \u201csuperstar\u201d immune systems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Although the SARS-CoV-2 virus has sickened more than 14 million people, bats contract similar viruses all the time without experiencing any known symptoms. Now, the newly sequenced genomes of six species spanning the bat family tree reveal how they\u2019ve been outsmarting viruses for 65 million years. The findings are an \u201cexcellent starting point for understanding [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-113097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113097\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}