Project description:SARS-CoV-2 emerged in humans in late 2019 and was rapidly followed by spillback into naive wildlife, leading to both mortality events and novel enzootic cycles. Of special concern is whether SARS-CoV-2 could establish in bats in the Americas, given that sarbecoviruses coevolved with rhinolophid bats in the Eastern Hemisphere. We analyzed residual plasma samples from a previous SARS-CoV-2 challenge study of Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) to identify candidate protein biomarkers of susceptibility and assessed the abundance of these same proteins in a wild population of this bat species in Texas. Using 2 uL plasma volumes, we generated proteomes from captive (n = 20; four resistant, five susceptible, 11 unchallenged) and wild (n = 15) bats using the S-Trap method and LC-MS/MS, identifying 475 proteins using data-independent acquisition and a species-specific genome annotation generated by the Bat1K Project.
