Turtles or potential intermediate hosts for the new coronavirus

On February 26, Liu Long of the People's Hospital affiliated with Hubei Medical College, in a paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology by the Wu Jianguo Task Force of Guangzhou Jinan University, said that turtles (western tortoises, green turtles, Chinese dragonflies) may also be potential intermediate hosts for the transmission of the new coronavirus to humans. Based on the composition and differences between the coronavirus hedgehog protein and the host ACE2 receptor, the researchers predicted the potential intermediate host of the new coronavirus.
the study focused on comparing the protrusion sequence between the new coronavirus and SARS-CoV, bat SARS-like CoV, and other coronavirus. This helps with evolutionary analysis and the search for possible virus libraries. In addition, the analysis of ACE2 structures and combined base sequence pairs can help provide clues to distinguish potential hosts.
results showed that bat SARS-like CoV RaTG13 had 96.2% sequence similarity with the overall genome of the new coronavirus. It is worth noting that SARS-CoV is the most widely distributed coronavirus in the case of lathatrophes.
team also compared RBD sequences from SARS-CoV, bats, or armor-piercing SARS-like CoV and new coronavirus prickly proteins. The researchers say bat SARS-like CoV, which is missing from the 473rd to the 490th remnants, is located in an external substruct structure and seems to be certain that the viruses do not naturally infect people.
THE RBD sequence of new coronavirus 329-521 has a 93% esophericity with a roller-penicilers-like COV SRR10168377, higher than 89% of bat SARS-like CoV RaTG13, but only 85% of the 2nd. This suggests that if only the prickly RBD is concerned, the roller coaster-like COV SRR10168377 may have infected humans across the host barrier.
researchers say that from Asn501 in the RBD domain with ACE2 subjects 41 and 353 bits, turtles and roller coaster appear to be closer to humans than bats. This suggests that turtles, like snakes and roller coasters, may be potential intermediate hosts for transmitting the new coronavirus to humans, but further research is needed to confirm (Source: Wang Ruixuan, China Science Daily)
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