New coronavirus isolated from pangolin

A novel coronavirus was identified as a potential intermediate host in the more than 1000 metagenomic samples of South China Agricultural University in February 7th In February 20th, the novel coronavirus (bioRxiv) was published in the preprint website (without peer review) It further demonstrated that pangolin coronavirus was highly correlated with the new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) and suggested that pangolin has the potential to act as the intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2 In this study, the research team proposed the recombination of sars-cov-2 or pangolin-derived coronavirus and bat like coronavirus ratg13, and the coronavirus antibody against the peripheral blood of pangolin can combine with sars-cov-2, again providing the evidence that pangolin may be an intermediate host Because coronaviruses are common in mammals and birds, researchers used BLAST search to search for SARS like cov sequences in all available mammalian and bird viruses, metagenomic and transcriptome data Finally, in a group of pangolin virus genomes, the researchers identified 34 highly correlated overlapping sequences Therefore, the researchers focused on the study of SARS r-cov in pangolin Photo source: the biorxiv study used tissue samples of 29 dead pangolins confiscated by Guangdong Customs and forestry department from March to December 2019, including 4 Chinese pangolins and 25 Malay pangolins Most of the pangolins were inactive and whimpered when they were taken to a wildlife rescue center, but they died despite all the rescue efforts Tissue samples were obtained from lung, lymph node, liver, spleen, muscle, kidney and other tissues of pangolin, including sequence analysis, antibody analysis, structure prediction, histological and pathological analysis In the analysis of 8 plasma samples of pangolin, it was found that one of the samples reacted positively, which indicated that pangolin was naturally infected with sars-cov-2 like virus In the detection of the lung tissue of pangolin, interstitial inflammation and serious blockage were found, inflammatory cells were found in the liver, lymph, kidney and other tissues, and a small amount of bleeds were found in the alveolar duct and bladder epidermis Photo source: in biorxiv study, nine pangolin lungs were identified by virus The amino acid homology of S, e, m and N were 90.4%, 100%, 98.2% and 96.7% respectively The detected data showed that, in particular, the receptor binding domain (RBD) of S protein and the RBD of S protein of sars-cov-2 were only one amino acid different These data suggest that sars-cov-2 may originate from the recombination of pangolin cov like and bat cov ratg13 viruses, the researchers concluded In addition, because the S protein of SARS-CoV and sars-cov-2 has been proved to recognize ACE2 when the host cell enters, the researchers compared and analyzed the ACE2 of human, pangolin and civet cat, and found that SARS CoV can recognize human and civet cat, and seems to be able to combine with the ACE2 of pangolin But the S protein of sars-cov-2 and pangolin coronavirus can only recognize ACE2 of human and pangolin Because the RBD of the pangolin coronavirus is almost the same as that of sars-cov-2 and has a strong binding capacity to human ACE2, the researchers said, the pangolin coronavirus may pose a threat to public health in the future The binding of ACE2 and RBD further confirmed the potential of pangolin as intermediate host of sars-cov-2 Photo source: biorxiv the author of this research paper is from South China Agricultural University, China Agricultural University, Guangzhou Zoo, Guangdong wildlife rescue center However, it is a little disappointing that in the news release on February 7, South China Agricultural University once said: "through the genome analysis of the virus, it was found that the sequence similarity between the isolated virus strain and the currently infected virus strain is as high as 99%" However, at present, it seems that the virus strain isolated by South China Agricultural University and the new coronavirus are highly similar in only a part of genes, and in the whole gene At the group level, ratg13 virus isolated from bats in Yunnan Province is further away from the new coronavirus Reference: isolation and characterization of 2019 ncov like corona from Malayan pangolins doi: 10.1101/2020.02.17.951335