Small bats can live for decades, carry viruses that sicken other mammals, and rarely get cancer. A new study suggests these traits may grow from the same roots. An international team read nearly complete DNA from eight closely related bat species in the genus Myotis and found that genes shaped by viruses overlap with genes involved in DNA repair, cancer and lifespan1. The work was published in the journal Nature2 and is drawing fresh coverage this week1.
“Pathogen adaption, longevity, and cancer resistance—they are fundamentally linked. Many of the genes that have adapted to viruses in bats are genes that are also involved in longevity and cancer resistance.”
That is how co-lead author Elise Lauterbur, an assistant professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Vermont, summed up the results3.
What the researchers did
The team, led by the University of Vermont and Penn State University, built near-complete genomes (the full DNA instructions of an animal) and grew cell lines for eight Myotis species1. The species are close relatives, splitting from one another about 11 million years ago4.
To get the material, the scientists caught bats in the American West and took tiny circular patches from their wings, which the university compared to an ear piercing, instead of collecting organs5. The bats were released afterward2. Co-lead author Juan Manuel “Manny” Vazquez, an assistant professor at Penn State, developed the approach and used the tissue to grow the cells and build the genomes5. “Here is a way to do science for any animal on earth that doesn’t require killing the animal and is in fact compatible with better science,” Vazquez said3.
Using long-read sequencing, the team placed about 98.6% of each genome into 22 to 23 chromosome-scale pieces per species, with about 20,869 protein-coding genes in each1. Each genome held roughly 6,813 to 8,013 structural variants, meaning stretches of DNA that were flipped, copied or moved, compared with a reference bat species1.
Two kinds of viruses, two kinds of change
The clearest finding was a split in how bats adapted to viruses. Bat proteins that interact with DNA viruses, such as hepatitis B and herpes viruses, showed strong signs of “positive selection,” meaning changes that spread because they helped survival3. Proteins that interact with RNA viruses did not show that pattern; instead, those genes were more likely to have gained or lost extra copies over time1. The team checked this against 47 published genomes from other bats and found the pattern unusual compared with other mammal groups1.
Humans show the opposite tilt, with selection in proteins that interact with RNA viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza3. The researchers suggest this mismatch could help explain why bats are an important source of viruses that jump to people4.
Extra gene copies matter because a spare copy can take on a new job. “So potentially, you now have two things you are good at instead of one,” Lauterbur said5.
A gene with one, two or three copies
One example is PKR, an immune and stress-response protein found across mammals1. “In every single other mammal that has been looked at, there is one copy of this gene,” Lauterbur said3. Some Myotis bats carry one, two or three copies6, and both the duplicated and single-copy forms have lasted for tens of millions of years1.
Accounts of what the extra copies do differ. GEN reported that the findings suggest additional copies have a protective effect that promotes longevity6. But according to another detailed summary of the paper, lab tests did not show that having both copies simply produced a stronger antiviral response, and very high PKR activity harmed the cells themselves1. That points to a trade-off between fighting viruses and damaging the bat’s own cells1.
Lifespan, cancer and damaged cells
The team compared lifespan changes across a family tree of more than 1,000 mammals. Bats showed some of the largest and fastest increases in lifespan without big changes in body size1. Brandt’s bat and the little brown bat ranked in the 99th percentile for how quickly their lifespans grew compared with their ancestors1. In lineages with the biggest lifespan gains, genes in cancer-related pathways were especially likely to show signs of selection1. In the little brown bat, 35 of 65 genes in one DNA repair pathway showed such signs1.
The cell experiments added a twist. When Vazquez treated bat cells with toxic chemicals, cells from the little brown bat, the longest-lived bat in the sample, did not switch on DNA-repair genes but instead turned up genes that make damaged cells die2. “The longest-lived bat in North America decides ‘I can’t save this ship’ and immediately switches gears to prioritize killing off the cells that are damaged,” Vazquez said, adding that elephants use the same strategy2. GEN reported that the little brown bat cells responded differently at high doses of a chemotherapy drug, where damage is most likely6.
What it does not show yet
This is a study of bat DNA and bat cells grown in a dish. It finds genes that changed alongside long life; it does not show that any single gene causes bats to live longer. GEN noted it may be too early to use bats’ immune adaptations to treat human disease6. No treatment, drug or test for people comes from this work.
The cell findings are also open to interpretation. One summary describes an “unusually strong response to DNA damage”1, while the Berkeley account stresses that the response favored killing damaged cells over repairing them2. Both describe the same experiments in one bat species.
Who is behind it
The work is academic. An early version was posted as a preprint (a paper not yet checked by outside experts) in October 2024, listing about 30 authors, including Vazquez, Lauterbur and Berkeley’s Peter Sudmant4. Vazquez began collecting bats as a UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow starting in 2020, and he now holds cell cultures from 259 individual bats of 32 species2. Much of the public material about the study comes from the universities’ own press offices52. The sources read for this article do not describe the study’s funding or any company ties.
How it fits the field
Bats have long interested aging researchers. Some species live up to 10 times longer than their size would predict, and cancer is extremely rare in them7. A Brandt’s bat banded in Europe was recaptured 50 years later, while the black Myotis of South and Central America lives about seven years2. Other teams, such as Emma Teeling’s group in Ireland, follow a colony of about 700 Myotis bats in France and have founded the Bat1K effort to sequence 1,000 bat species7.
“If you look at two bats, the same size, one lives 3 years the other lives 30 years and they are very closely related, like humans and Neanderthals, you can essentially find a very small number of genetic changes that leads to a very big change in their lifespan,” Vazquez said3. Sudmant said the team hopes to “better understand the interplay between DNA damage and the immune system”2.
What to watch next
Lauterbur said she wants to explore underappreciated changes such as gene copy number, which she believes are only beginning to be understood6. Vazquez’s large collection of bat cells offers material for further tests across more species2. The key open questions are which of these gene changes actually affect lifespan, and whether any of them point to biology that could be studied in people.
