Fig. 2

Heatmap matrix was based on four ACE2 binding regions that encompass the key residues enabling interactions with the SARS-CoV-2 S protein, detailed on Table 2 and Supplementary file 1. The ACE2 binding regions were concatened and used to infer the evolutionary divergence values, represented in the matrix heatmap. The evolutionary divergence values are available in the Supplementary Table 2. The heatmap color gradients represent the evolutionary divergence based on the number of amino acid substitutions/site from a pairwise comparison between sequences, from low (red) to high (blue). Evolutionary divergence analyses were conducted using the JTT matrix-based model. The heatmap were constructed using the Microsoft Excel™ software