Genomic Characteristics of SARS-CoV,MERS-CoV and 2019-nCoV

LI Tong; YU Xing; CHEN Meng-xiang; LV Yuan; ZHA Wen-ting

摘要：In December 2019,Wuhan,the capital of Hubei Province in China,reported a series of unexplained cases of pneumonia,which has been confirmed to be an acute infectious respiratory disease caused by Novel Corona Virus 2019(2019-nCoV)infection.The World Health Organization(WHO)named this pneumonia Corona Virus Disease 2019(COVID-19).The 21st century had witnessed the spread of two previously unrecognized coronaviruses around the world with high pathogenicity before,namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus(SARS-CoV)and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus(MERS-CoV)respectively.At present,2019-nCoV's genome has been sequenced by researchers all over the world represented by China.Based on the systematic review and analysis of the genomic sequence characteristics of three highly pathogenic coronaviruses,this paper expounds the basic characteristics of the genomes of SARS-CoV,MERS-CoV and 2019-nCoV,which all belong to β-coronaviruses,the functionally important ORFs,ORF1a,ORF1b and major structural proteins including the spike(S),membrane(M)and envelop(E)and nucleiccapsid(N)proteins have no significant difference with each other.However,as the majority of genetic variations being seen at the N-terminal part of S protein,2019-nCoV aligned best with the bat SARS-like virus bat-SL-CoVZX45.And Structure analysis of the spike(S)protein of 2019-nCoV showed that it's S protein only binds weakly to the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme2(ACE2)receptor on human cells whereas the human SARS-Cov exhibits high affinity to the ACE receptor and MERS-Cov does not need ACE2 to infect human cells,its receptor on human cells is DPP4.In the future,we hope to provide new ideas for the prevention and treatment of coronavirus by strengthening the research of coronavirus S protein and ACE2 receptor,and continuous surveillance and genomic characterization of coronaviruses from bats are necessary due to potential risks of human infection induced by a genetic mutation.