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Eradicating polio globally has been a major WHO initiative for the last 30 years, and polio incidence has been reduced considerably worldwide. A central tenet of the campaign is that once eliminated, the disease is unlikely to reemerge because it has no zoonotic reservoirs. However, the three poliovirus serotypes are closely related to 11 coxsackie A viruses (CAVs), and together these strains are considered a single species, human enterovirus C (HEV-C). The differences in disease manifestations between these viruses arise from use of different cell surface receptors to infect human cells: intracellular adhesion molecule 1 for CAVs and CD155 for polioviruses. Could a CAV HEV-C strain possibly acquire the receptor tropism of a poliovirus? To …