New paper out today in @eLife uses within-host models & cell culture experiments to show how unique #bat immunity drives rapid #virus replication likely to be virulent upon emergence in non-bat hosts! elifesciences.org/articles/48401 @BootsLab @Andy2Dobson @ChandranLab @MarcelAMller

Bats' fierce immune systems drive viruses to higher virulence, making them deadlier in humans, a new study says. The researchers note that disrupting bat habitat appears to stress the animals and makes them shed even more viruses. elifesciences.org/articles/48401… pic.twitter.com/i7KQxdFLN6

I have been thinking about it recently. Why bats host crazy viruses. Immunology can help to understand it. Very interesting paper!

Great talk from @caraebrook at @UWBiology today, integrating conservation biology and disease ecology. Not part of the talk, but see her paper out yesterday in @eLife, which answers the question "why do bats carry so many virulent zoonotic diseases?"

Maybe it does the same thing in bats. They're social too, after all. Maybe. But the context of the bat immune system is so different from that of the human immune system that I'm skeptical. @caraebrook's work provides some useful background.

#Bats carry deadly #viruses without themselves being affected. In some bats, the #interferon pathway is perpetually switched on. In other mammals, such a trait would cause #inflammation. Bats, however, lost some genes that promote inflammation.