Predicting susceptibility for SARS-CoV-2 infection in domestic and wildlife animals using ACE2 protein sequence homology.

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.