Predicting susceptibility for SARS‐CoV‐2 infection in domestic and wildlife animals using ACE2 protein sequence homology
Ashutosh Kumar, Sada N. Pandey, Vikas Pareek, Ravi Kant Narayan, Muneeb A. Faiq, Chiman Kumari
Abstract
The article is presenting a bioinformatics based method predicting susceptibility for SARS-CoV-2 infection in domestic and wildlife animals. Recently, there were reports of cats and ferrets, dogs, minks, golden hamster, rhesus monkeys, tigers, and lions testing for SARS-CoV-2 RNA which indicated for the possible interspecies viral transmission. Our method successfully predicted the susceptibility of these animals for contracting SARS-CoV-2 infection. This method can be used as a screening tool for guiding viral RNA testing for domestic and wildlife animals at risk of getting COVID-19. We provide a list of the animals at risk of developing COVID-19 based on the susceptibility score.