Surveillance of 16 UK native bat species through conservationist networks uncovers coronaviruses with zoonotic potential

While the COVID-19 pandemic, caused by SARS-CoV-2, has renewed genomic surveillance efforts in wildlife, there has been limited characterisation of bat-borne coronaviruses in Europe. We collected 48 faecal samples from all but one of the 17 bat species breeding in the UK, through an extensive network of bat rehabilitators and conservationists, and screened them for coronaviruses using deep RNA sequencing. We assembled nine novel, high-quality coronaviral genomes, comprising four alphacoronaviruses from Myotis daubentonii and Pipistrellus pipistrellus , a Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)-related coronavirus from Plecotus auritus , and four closely-related sarbecoviruses isolated from both horseshoe bat species Rhinolophus hipposideros and R. ferrumequinum . We further used in vitro assays to demonstrate that at least one of these sarbecoviruses can bind ACE2, the receptor used by SARS-CoV-2 to infect human cells, which was also supported using in silico structural and sequence analyses. Although this sarbecovirus can enter human cells in vitro when ACE2 is over-expressed, our analyses indicate that it is unlikely to infect humans and would require adaptations to do so. Our findings highlight the importance of working collaboratively with conservation networks to enable larger, coordinated viral surveillance efforts and prevent the emergence of zoonoses from wildlife. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.