(Fighting against New Coronary Pneumonia) The latest research finds clues to the evolution of New Coronavirus or aids in vaccine design
China News Service, Beijing, July 10 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Springer Nature's professional academic journal "Nature-Structure and Molecular Biology" recently published a virology research paper that said that through the new coronavirus (SARS- CoV-2) and its related bat virus RaTG13 spike glycoprotein (spike glycoprotein can allow the virus to combine with the cell and enter the cell) for a comparative study, which provides information for further understanding of the evolution process of the new crown virus spike, This may have implications for vaccine design.
According to the paper, researchers believe that bat coronavirus may be an evolutionary precursor of the new coronavirus. Previous studies have found that the relationship between the bat virus RaTG13 and the new coronavirus is the closest in the known relationship. However, it is unclear how the new coronavirus has evolved to infect humans, and it is unclear whether it spread to humans through an intermediate host or directly.
Corresponding authors of the paper, Antoni Wrobel and Donald Benton, and experts in virology research at the Francis Crick Institute in London, UK, and their colleagues found that by comparing the spike glycoproteins of the new coronavirus and RaTG13, Although the two are similar in structure, the form of the new crown virus spike glycoprotein is more stable, and its affinity with the human receptor protein ACE2 is about 1,000 times higher.
They also found that the furin cleavage site on the spike of the new coronavirus may be beneficial to the virus because it may promote the binding of the virus to the receptor on the cell. Based on these observations, the authors believe that a bat virus similar to RaTG13 is unlikely to infect human cells, which also supports the theory that the new coronavirus evolved after the recombination of different coronavirus genomes.
The authors of the paper pointed out that the new coronavirus spike glycoprotein they studied was of high resolution, almost complete, and had more external loops than the previously reported structure, which may have important significance for vaccine development and design. (Finish)