Monitoring And Machine Learning of Animal Viruses

Note broad monitoring, machine learning and testing used.

Which Animal Viruses Could Infect People? Computers Are Racing to Find Out

The New York Times, Carl Zimmer, April 27, 2022

Researchers are using machine learning models to predict which animal viruses can infect human cells. In March, Georgetown University's Colin Carlson and his colleagues established the VIRION open access database, which incorporates data about 9,521 viruses and their 3,692 animal hosts. Carlson and colleagues also developed a model to identify the animals most likely to harbor relatives of SARS-CoV-2. In 2020, the model identified over 300 species of bats most likely to harbor betacoronaviruses; since then, 47 of those species have been found to harbor betacoronaviruses. Said Rocky Mountain Laboratories' Emmie de Wit, "What we really want to know is not necessarily which viruses can infect humans, but which viruses can cause an outbreak."   .... '