COVID-19. Bats are natural reservoirs of pathogenic viruses. The danger of using CRISPR to edit germline cells or embryos of bats.

27 Fevereiro 2020, 11:00 • Rui Artur Paiva Loureiro Gomes

Bats are natural reservoirs of pathogenic viruses (coronaviruses, Ebola, Marburg, …) because its immune system responds differently of other mammals. Bat cells in culture have already been edited with the CRISPR technology but, as far as we know, no one has yet edited bat’s embryos to produce a whole bat with a specific modification. The editing of genes of the immune system of bats would be extremely unpredictable and dangerous. For example, the genome editing with CRISPR to introduce the amino acid residue S358 into the STING (Simulator of interferon genes) protein of bats (S358 exists in the STING protein of human and other mammals, but not in bats) has already been done in bat cells in culture, but not in the whole organism. This editing could have unpredictable effects such has the production of “natural” recombinant coronaviruses as pathogenic as SARS-CoV-2, or even more virulent.