This AI Can Forecast the New Animal Host of the Next Coronavirus

Joen Coronel, Tech Times 18 February 2021, 04:02 am

A recent study revealed an AI model could conduct a forecast to determine what animals will be the next hosts of the new coronavirus. Researchers noted that the study will revolve around predicting the outbreaks and discovering them before developing in a particular location.

AI's Power To Predict The Animal That Can Possibly Carry The Next Coronavirus

According to the lead author of the study, Maya Wardeh, the tool was beneficial to the coronavirus study since the said virus is known to enter different hosts, including animals and humans.

The capability of COVID-19 to jump from one subject to another was originally coined to the origin of the bats. It was observed that what causes the emergence of the new diseases was the shifting ability of it to transfer quickly to a new organism. Furthermore, this gave the researchers a freeway to better understand how animals and humans interact with the virus that started in Wuhan, China.

The algorithm used in the study relies on a machine learning process called "DeepWalk," which focuses on making predictions of the association of the LncRNA-disease and the biological target. It will lead to the questions that will figure out what species could be a coronavirus host, type of coronavirus has inhibited a particular species, and species could be carrying an unknown coronavirus strain.

Regarding the study, the authors considered the association of 879 mammal animals with 411 types of coronaviruses. For instance, the Asian palm civet from South and Southeast Asia could be a potent host of 32 types of coronaviruses. The bat, which was believed to be the first known host of the virus, was able to carry 68 coronaviruses, given that it is a horseshoe bat.

Moreover, even the domestic cat could be a carrier of numerous coronaviruses. Even a European rabbit and the hedgehog were seen to be a possible host of the viruses, Health Exec reported.

It was revealed that the current findings indicated that the shifting of the coronavirus from one species to another was 11 times more powerful compared to the past interactions. It was also found out that the possibility of being infected was 40 times when it comes to mammals because they could carry over four types of coronaviruses.

For the co-leader of the study, Marcus Blagrove, the results will help the researchers since the new coronavirus has already undergone various transformations. In some cases, recombination of other coronaviruses with SARS-CoV-2 happens, so the infection becomes much higher in humans.

Limitations Of The Study

Researchers said that the study still needs further evaluation as it only relies on limited data. Several future types of research will be carried out in the next studies. According to them, the recent testing on other mammal species yielded several predictions that could help identify the next possible hosts.

You can read the full study entitled "Predicting mammalian hosts in which novel coronaviruses can be generated" at Nature.com.