| First Author | Zhou P | Year | 2020 |
| Journal | Nature | Volume | 579 |
| Issue | 7798 | Pages | 270-273 |
| PubMed ID | 32015507 | Mgi Jnum | J:291451 |
| Mgi Id | MGI:6445854 | Doi | 10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7 |
| Citation | Zhou P, et al. (2020) A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin. Nature 579(7798):270-273 |
| abstractText | Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 18 years ago, a large number of SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) have been discovered in their natural reservoir host, bats(1-4). Previous studies have shown that some bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans(5-7). Here we report the identification and characterization of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China. The epidemic, which started on 12 December 2019, had caused 2,794 laboratory-confirmed infections including 80 deaths by 26 January 2020. Full-length genome sequences were obtained from five patients at an early stage of the outbreak. The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV. Furthermore, we show that 2019-nCoV is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus. Pairwise protein sequence analysis of seven conserved non-structural proteins domains show that this virus belongs to the species of SARSr-CoV. In addition, 2019-nCoV virus isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of a critically ill patient could be neutralized by sera from several patients. Notably, we confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry receptor-angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2)-as SARS-CoV. |
