Shi Zhengli (; born 26 May 1964) is a Chinese

virologist Virology is the scientific study of biological viruses. It is a subfield of microbiology that focuses on their detection, structure, classification and evolution, their methods of infection and exploitation of host cells for reproduction, thei ...

who researches SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origin. Shi directs the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the

Wuhan Institute of Virology The Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (WIV; ) is a research institute on virology administered by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), which reports to the State Council of the People's Republic of China. The institute ...

(WIV). In 2017, Shi and her colleague Cui Jie discovered that the SARS coronavirus likely originated in a population of cave-dwelling

horseshoe bat Horseshoe bats are bats in the family Rhinolophidae. In addition to the single living genus, ''Rhinolophus'', which has about 106 species, the extinct genus '' Palaeonycteris'' has been recognized. Horseshoe bats are closely related to the Old ...

s in

Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township Xiyang Yi Ethnic Township (Yi script:?, ) is an ethnic township in Jinning District, Yunnan. Demographics and Languages Among its 10,155 residents, 78% (7,921) are ethnic minorities in China, chiefly Yi people (Lolo) and Hani people, as of 2006. ...

, Yunnan. *For the research paper, see: *For English news coverage, see: *For a more detailed news coverage in Chinese, see: She came to prominence in the popular press as "Batwoman" during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

for her work with bat coronaviruses. Shi was included in ''Time''s 100 Most Influential People of 2020.

Early life and education

Shi was born in

Xixia County Xixia County (; postal: Sisia) is a county in the southwest of Henan province, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the west. It is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Nanyang, and has an area of and a population of 420,000 a ...

, Nanyang, Henan province in 1964. She graduated from

Wuhan University Wuhan University (WHU; ) is a public research university in Wuhan, Hubei. The university is sponsored by the Ministry of Education. Wuhan university was founded as one of the four elite universities in the early republican period of China and i ...

in 1987 with a bachelor's degree in genetics. She received her master's degree from the

of the

Chinese Academy of Sciences The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); ), known by Academia Sinica in English until the 1980s, is the national academy of the People's Republic of China for natural sciences. It has historical origins in the Academia Sinica during the Republi ...

(CAS) in 1990, and she received her PhD at the Montpellier 2 University in France in 2000, where she gained fluency in French.

Career

In 2005, Shi Zhengli and colleagues found that bats are the natural reservoir of SARS-like coronaviruses. In 2008, Shi led a research team which studied binding of spike proteins of both natural and chimaeric SARS-like coronaviruses to

ACE2 Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is an enzyme that can be found either attached to the membrane of cells (mACE2) in the intestines, kidney, testis, gallbladder, and heart or in a soluble form (sACE2). Both membrane bound and soluble ACE2 a ...

receptors in human, civet and horseshoe bat cells, to determine the mechanism by which SARS may have spilled over into humans. In 2015, Shi Zhengli published a paper led by Ralph S Baric of the University of North Carolina, which showed that SARS had the potential to re-emerge from coronaviruses circulating in bat populations in the wild. Shi and her colleague Cui Jie led a team which sampled thousands of

s throughout China. In 2017, they published their findings, indicating that all the genetic components of the SARS coronavirus existed in a bat population in

, Yunnan. While no single bat harbored the exact strain of virus which caused the

2002–2004 SARS outbreak The 2002–2004 outbreak of SARS, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-1), infected over 8,000 people from 29 countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide. The outbreak was ...

, genetic analysis showed that different strains often mix, suggesting that the human version likely emerged from a combination of the strains present in the bat population. Shi's discoveries on the origin of SARS earned her international recognition. Shi is the director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases at the

(WIV), located in

Jiangxia District Jiangxia District () is one of 13 urban districts of the prefecture-level city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province, China, situated on the eastern (right) bank of the Yangtze River. Jiangxia district has an area of and a population of 680,0 ...

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...

. On her resume, Shi mentioned receiving grant funding from U.S. government sources totaling more than US$1.2 million, including $665,000 from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

from 2014 to 2019, as well as US$559,500 over the same period from

USAID The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance. With a budget of over $27 bi ...

2019

In a March 2019, Shi published an article titled "Bat Coronaviruses in China" in the journal ''

Viruses A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea. Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's ...

'', in which she and her co-authors warned that it is "highly likely that a future SARS or MERS-like coronavirus outbreaks will originate from bats, and there is an increased probability that this will occur in China."

2020

During the

, Shi and other institute scientists formed an expert group to research Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). In February 2020, researchers led by Shi Zhengli published an article in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' titled, "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin", finding that SARS-CoV-2 is in the same family as SARS, and that it has 96.2%

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding g ...

overlap with the most closely related known coronavirus,

RaTG13 Bat coronavirus RaTG13 is a SARS-like betacoronavirus that infects the horseshoe bat '' Rhinolophus affinis''. It was discovered in 2013 in bat droppings from a mining cave near the town of Tongguan in Mojiang county in Yunnan, China. In Februa ...

. In February 2020, her team published a paper in '' Cell Research'' showing that

remdesivir Remdesivir, sold under the brand name Veklury, Text was copied from this source which is © European Medicines Agency. Reproduction is authorized provided the source is acknowledged. is a broad-spectrum antiviral medication developed by the ...

and

chloroquine Chloroquine is a medication primarily used to prevent and treat malaria in areas where malaria remains sensitive to its effects. Certain types of malaria, resistant strains, and complicated cases typically require different or additional medi ...

inhibited the virus

in vitro ''In vitro'' (meaning in glass, or ''in the glass'') studies are performed with microorganisms, cells, or biological molecules outside their normal biological context. Colloquially called " test-tube experiments", these studies in biology ...

, and applied for a patent for the drug in China on behalf of the WIV. This caused conflict with an American pharmaceutical firm that had also applied for a patent. Shi co-authored a paper labelling the virus as the first

Disease X Disease X is a placeholder name that was adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO) in February 2018 on their shortlist of blueprint priority diseases to represent a hypothetical, unknown pathogen that could cause a future epidemic. The WHO ...

. In February 2020, the '' South China Morning Post'' reported that Shi's decade-long work to build up one of the world's largest databases of bat-related viruses gave the scientific community a "head start" in understanding the virus. The ''SCMP'' also reported that Shi was the focus of personal attacks in Chinese social media who claimed the WIV was the source of the virus, leading Shi to strongly affirm that the outbreak "has nothing to do with the lab." In a March 2020 interview with ''

Scientific American ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it. In print since 1845, it ...

'', where she was called China's "Bat Woman", Shi said "Bat-borne coronaviruses will cause more outbreaks", and "We must find them before they find us." In June 2021 the New York Times said that her research on coronaviruses at a state lab in Wuhan, had put her at the center of an outburst of feelings regarding the pandemic. On July 31 ''

Science Magazine ''Science'', also widely referred to as ''Science Magazine'', is the peer-reviewed academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the world's top academic journals. It was first published in 1880, ...

'' published an interview with Shi in which she commented "to date, there is zero infection of all staff and students in our institute." Asked by ''Science'' why the WIV conducts coronavirus experiments in BSL-4 labs when most other scientists work with coronaviruses BSL-2 or BSL-3 conditions, Shi explained that her group also used BSL-2 and BSL-3 laboratories for their coronavirus research, but that they had begun to use BSL-4 laboratories per government regulations after the pandemic.

Service and honours

Shi is a member of the Virology Committee of the Chinese Society for Microbiology. She is editor-in-chief of ''Virologica Sinica'', the ''Chinese Journal of Virology'', and the ''Journal of Fishery Sciences of China''. * 2016 Chevalier of the

Ordre des Palmes académiques A suite, in Western classical music and jazz, is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral/ concert band pieces. It originated in the late 14th century as a pairing of dance tunes and grew in scope to comprise up to five dances, sometimes with ...

* 2018 State Natural Science Award (Second Class) * February 2019 Fellow of the

American Academy of Microbiology The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), originally the Society of American Bacteriologists, is a professional organization for scientists who study viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa as well as other aspects of microbiology. It wa ...

(AAM)

References

External links

Profile: Shi Zhengli
from the ''World Society of Virology''

from the

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shi, Zhengli 1964 births Living people Biologists from Henan Chevaliers of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques Chinese virologists Chinese women biologists Coronavirus researchers Montpellier 2 University alumni People's Republic of China science writers Writers from Nanyang, Henan Wuhan University alumni