Bats sustaining viruses that rip our lungs and blood vessels apart isn’t because of population structure, it’s because their immune systems are tuned to produce different responses than ours in a way that causes bat viruses to frequently cause messed up responses in other mammals. For reasons that are only just starting to be figured out, their inflammatory responses are turned way the hell down and their interferon responses are turned way the hell up. This means that a virus that has evolved to replicate in them is able to basically completely silence the interferon response of other mammals, being overclocked for the job. If other factors let it actually replicate, this means the early disease goes nearly unnoticed by the innate immune system until viral replication has reached obscene levels and the adaptive immune system becomes involved, in a frequently poorly-regulated response. The viruses are also used to facing a strong innate antiviral response from the start, so they replicate much faster and with more fallout in the absence of that response than one that has reached equilibrium with us would.
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On another note, the innate immune response of jawed vertebrates has been reshaped by interaction with the adaptive immune response over evolutionary time and cannot be considered in isolation.
Thanks for the informative comments. You make great points. I think the population structure of bats may have something to do with their unique immune response to these infections but definitely want to look at the bat immune system more.
Bats sustaining viruses that rip our lungs and blood vessels apart isn’t because of population structure, it’s because their immune systems are tuned to produce different responses than ours in a way that causes bat viruses to frequently cause messed up responses in other mammals. For reasons that are only just starting to be figured out, their inflammatory responses are turned way the hell down and their interferon responses are turned way the hell up. This means that a virus that has evolved to replicate in them is able to basically completely silence the interferon response of other mammals, being overclocked for the job. If other factors let it actually replicate, this means the early disease goes nearly unnoticed by the innate immune system until viral replication has reached obscene levels and the adaptive immune system becomes involved, in a frequently poorly-regulated response. The viruses are also used to facing a strong innate antiviral response from the start, so they replicate much faster and with more fallout in the absence of that response than one that has reached equilibrium with us would.
---
On another note, the innate immune response of jawed vertebrates has been reshaped by interaction with the adaptive immune response over evolutionary time and cannot be considered in isolation.
Thanks for the informative comments. You make great points. I think the population structure of bats may have something to do with their unique immune response to these infections but definitely want to look at the bat immune system more.