A bat coronavirus can enter human cells through a previously unknown gateway

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22 April 2026 A bat coronavirus can enter human cells through a previously unknown gateway The identification of a receptor that is recognized by a subset of alphacoronaviruses provides insights into ‘spillover’ risk and pandemic potential. By Huan Yan 0 Huan Yan Huan Yan is in the State Key Laboratory of Virology and Biosafety, College of Life Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei 430072, China. View author publications PubMed Google Scholar

Coronaviruses are a vast and genetically diverse family, yet most of the molecular strategies that they use to enter host cells are unknown. This gap is especially evident for Alphacoronavirus — one of the four major coronavirus genera — which circulates predominantly in bats1. Understanding viral entry mechanisms matters because the recognition of receptor proteins in host cells is the main barrier that a virus must overcome to infect a new species. Once that barrier has been crossed in humans, animal viruses can spark outbreaks of disease, as seen with COVID-19. More than half of the diseases that infect humans originate in animals, and researchers suspect that the next pandemic will arise from a virus that is currently unknown2. Writing in Nature, Gallo et al.3 address this challenge by systematically investigating how diverse alphacoronaviruses interact with host receptors, revealing an uncharacterized gateway that could signal potential for a disease to spill over from animals to people.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-00908-y

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Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests.

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