A comprehensive dataset of animal-associated sarbecoviruses

Zoonotic spillover of sarbecoviruses (SarbeCoVs) from animals to humans under natural conditions has led to two large-scale pandemics, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) pandemic in 2003 and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Knowledge of the genetic diversity, geographical distribution, and host specificity of sarbecoviruses is therefore of interest in terms of pandemic surveillance and origin tracing of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. This study presents a comprehensive and up-to-date repository of publicly available animal-associated SarbeCoVs, covering 1,535 viruses identified from 68 animal species distributed in 43 countries worldwide. Relevant meta-information, such as host species, sampling time and location, was manually curated and included in the dataset to facilitate further research on the potential patterns of viral diversity and ecological characteristics. In addition, the dataset also provides well-annotated sequence sets of receptor-binding domains (RBDs) and receptor-binding motifs (RBMs) for the scientific community to highlight the potential determinants of successful cross-species transmission that could be helpful for risk estimation and strategic design of future emerging infectious disease control and prevention.