Fig. 1.

Marine mammal species are predicted to be susceptible to SARS-CoV-2. Species of Cetaceans, Fissipeds and Pinnipeds are predicted to be highly susceptible to the SARS-CoV-2 virus based on their ACE2 receptor. Genomes of 36 marine mammal species (all publicly available genomes for marine mammals on NCBI) were utilized to identify mutations in the ACE2 residues that bind SARS-CoV-2 to then determine susceptibility. The 20 consensus binding residues targeted by the SARS-CoV-2 virus are shown, with mutations denoted in orthologs noted (X = unknown residue; aligning regions were not available for Arctocephalus gazelle and Halichoerus grypus whole shotgun genome sequences). The susceptibility of species was scored using the MutaBind2 tool that determined how the mutations in ACE2 orthologs affected the binding affinity of the virus. Species were grouped in terms of susceptibility as follows: higher than human susceptibility (if binding affinity was increased by the mutations), high, medium and low. The phylogenetic tree and relationships between species were gathered from TimeTree (http://www.timetree.org) a database providing insight into the evolutionary relationships between species. Branch lengths are not representative of evolutionary times for the phylogenetic tree.