Professors DeeAnn Reeder and Ken Field at Bucknell University and Imran Ejotre at Muni University in Arua, Uganda are conducting a five-year study of fruit bats in Uganda. The goal of the project is to understand how different species of bats respond to different immune triggers under natural conditions. You can find out more about the project here and here.
Bats could help us better understand coronavirus infections, as described in an article by Tom Avril in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Bats carry coronaviruses but don’t get sick. Could their secret help us fight COVID-19?” The article describes the work being done in Prof. Field’s and Prof. Reeder’s labs at Bucknell and how bats have a unique evolutionary history with coronaviruses.
Professors Field and Reeder were recently awarded a National Science Foundation RAPID Grant, “Immune Responses to CoV Infections in African and North American Bats.” The $200,000 grant will be used to study whether bats hold a secret to getting infected with coronaviruses without getting as sick as humans. Using samples collected over the past five years and stockpiled in freezers at Bucknell, they will be looking to see which coronaviruses infect these bats and how the bats respond to them.
Our collaboration with Thomas Lilley, Steve Patterson and others was published in G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, “Genome-Wide Changes in Genetic Diversity in a Population of Myotis lucifugus Affected by White-Nose Syndrome.” Combined with a couple of other similar studies, we are starting to understand how white-nose syndrome might be selecting for bats that are less susceptible, similar to what may have happened millennia ago in Eurasian bats.