{"id":232888,"date":"2026-03-09T23:15:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T04:15:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-study-finds"},"modified":"2026-03-09T23:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T04:15:23","slug":"recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-study-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-study-finds","title":{"rendered":"Recent pandemic viruses jumped to humans without prior adaptation, study finds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/recent-pandemic-viruses-jumped-to-humans-without-prior-adaptation-study-finds.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A new University of California San Diego study <a href=\"https:\/\/linkinghub.elsevier.com\/retrieve\/pii\/S0092867426001716\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i>Cell<\/i> challenges a long-standing assumption about how animal viruses become capable of sparking human epidemics and pandemics. Using a phylogenetic, genome-wide analysis across multiple viral families, researchers report that most zoonotic viruses\u2014infectious pathogens that spread from animals to humans, including the cause of COVID-19\u2014do not show evidence of special evolutionary adaptation before spilling over into humans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis work has direct relevance to the ongoing controversy around COVID-19 origins,\u201d said Joel Wertheim, Ph.D., senior author and professor of medicine in the Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health at UC San Diego School of Medicine.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom an evolutionary perspective, we find no evidence that SARS-CoV-2 was shaped by selection in a laboratory or prolonged evolution in an intermediate host prior to its emergence. That absence of evidence is exactly what we would expect from a natural zoonotic event\u2014and it represents another nail in the coffin for theories invoking laboratory manipulation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A new University of California San Diego study published in Cell challenges a long-standing assumption about how animal viruses become capable of sparking human epidemics and pandemics. Using a phylogenetic, genome-wide analysis across multiple viral families, researchers report that most zoonotic viruses\u2014infectious pathogens that spread from animals to humans, including the cause of COVID-19\u2014do not [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-232888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232888","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\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}