July 11, 2018 -The discovery of two new viruses related to those that cause SARS and MERS To prevent the next pandemic, pinpoint it at the source. That’s the idea behind PREDICT, a global surveillance program that has spent almost 10 years hunting for new viruses that could spill over from vulnerable wildlife to humans. Now, PREDICT researchers in Myanmar have hit pay dirt with a never-before-seen virus that infects wrinkle-lipped bats—a virus in the same family as the ones that cause SARS and MERS. The Myanmar virus is the first of its kind to be detected on a global scale. The team additionally identified a second new virus that had previously been found in Thailand, also in bats. Such discoveries are critical, because what happens in Myanmar doesn’t always stay in Myanmar. “Myanmar is in a central location in Southeast Asia—an area of primary concern for viral diseases and emerging infectious disease,” says Marc Valitutto, a wildlife veterinarian heading the efforts in the region, which is lush with tropical rainforest and rich in biodiversity. Around 75 percent of today’s emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic, or transferred by contact between wildlife and humans. But because animals don’t always exhibit—let alone complain of—the same symptoms of illness that humans do, zoonotic diseases are challenging to detect, and the consequences can be disastrous. Since the turn of the 21st century, more than a dozen global outbreaks have spread from animals to humans, including Ebola, SARS and avian influenza. With this in mind, the PREDICT team has leveraged the veterinary resources at the Smithsonian to unveil potentially devastating diseases that have not yet entered the human population. Their efforts, which span the fields of wildlife conservation and global public health, bolster the world’s growing arsenal against infectious disease. PREDICT is funded by USAID, and brings together a bevy of global health-minded organizations including the Smithsonian Institution, the One Health Institute at the University of California at Davis, EcoHealth Alliance, Metabiota and the Wildlife Conservation Society. In many cases, the team ends up turning first to wildlife: “Human health is critical, but if you want to get upstream of an outbreak, you need to think increasingly about where the virus is coming from and how you can detect it,” explains Suzan Murray, director of Smithsonian’s Global Health Program, which partners with PREDICT in Myanmar and Kenya. So far, the team has discovered over 800 new viruses globally by sampling local wildlife, livestock and human populations susceptible to transmission in over 30 countries in Africa and Asia. But according to Chelsea Wood, a conservation ecologist at the University of Washington who is not affiliated with PREDICT, this is likely only the tip of the iceberg. “People really overestimate our understanding of medically important viruses in the world,” she says. “Tropical rainforests [in particular] are just cesspools of viral diversity—the highest viral diversity on the planet.” To make this latest discovery, Smithsonian conservation biologists spent three and a half years closely tracking the bats, primates and rodents—animals previously implicated in the spread of viral epidemics—native to Myanmar. Each animal that comes under the care of the Myanmar team undergoes extensive testing, with researchers collecting saliva, urine, feces and blood. Valitutto and his team have also begun to track the migration patterns of several bat species in the area using cutting-edge GPS technology. “If one species carries a disease, it’s important to know where it’s going and where it’s coming from,” Valitutto explains. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/global-surveillance-program-identifies-never-seen-virus-myanmars-bats-180969598/