Coronaviruses of UK carnivores

Coronaviruses of wild animals display frequent species jumps into new species, most recently causing the COVID-19 pandemic. Our recent work monitoring UK carnivores and mustelids (weasels, stoats, badgers, foxes, otters) for spillover of SARS-2 will be continued and extended in this project. While so far SARS-2 has not been found in UK wildlife we have sequenced novel viruses in stoats but don't know much about these viruses apart from their genetic sequence. This group of viruses is prone to forming recombinant viruses in domestic animals (cats and dogs) with some of these crossing the species barrier sporadically into people (potential spill over into production animals is unknown). It likely that dog and cat viruses also infect many of these species but this has been little studied. This project will focus on screening existing sample banks (and extending sample collection with existing collaborators) for related alphacoronaviruses in UK carnivores and mustelids. The project will characterise the epidemiology of the viruses in their host species and interactions with other pathogens of concern such as bovine tuberculosis in badgers or avian influenza in otters and foxes. The project will also examinethe recombination and cross species transmission potential of these viruses. Further work may include cell culture experiments to characterise how recombination of canine and feline alphacoronaviruses occurs and expression of proteins from alphacoronaviruses to assess cross reactivity with SARS-2 in serology assays (which may complicate screening of wildlife for SARS-2)