Abstract
Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is a receptor for SARS-CoV-2 spike protein on the cell surface and plays a key role in the development of COVID-19. The high conservatism of ACE2 structure in different species and the large number of human contacts with livestock increase the risk of spreading SARS-CoV-2 among the ones if the virus will be able to penetrate and replicate in the cells of such animals successfully. The result of this course of events may be the emergence of the animal reservoirs of coronavirus disease.
 To assess this possibility, a comparative analysis of the amino acid sequences of ACE2 receptors for SARS-CoV-2 in different species of livestock with human ACE2 was performed. High degrees of identity and similarity were found for ACE2 receptors of donkey, horse, rabbit, alpaca, lama, dromedary, pig, sheep, goat and cattle (taurine and zebu), lower – for poultry species (chicken, duck and turkey). The data obtained in this study are consistent with the results of previous experiments on the ability of SARS-CoV-2 to interact with ACE2 receptors of different animal species. Although there is evidence of pig, chicken and duck resistance to SARS-CoV-2 by intranasal inoculation, the risk of the virus adaptation to livestock infecting, given the mutational variability of the virus, remains high, which makes relevant the further studies of SARS-CoV-2 interactions with livestock.
Highlights
Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the pathogen that causes an infectious respiratory disease known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) [1]
Despite the fact that duck Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) consists of 805 amino acid residues, as well as human ACE2, the same length of the polypeptide chain in this case is due to the presence of several insertions and deletions and does not indicate the greater similarity of duck ACE2 to human ACE2 than for other bird species
The ability of SARS-CoV-2 to use human ACE2 receptor was taken as 100%, and for other animal species the value was taken relative to it
Summary
Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the pathogen that causes an infectious respiratory disease known as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID19) [1]. At the time of writing, there are seven known species of coronaviruses that cause human disease. The other three species of Betacoronavirus genus: SARS-CoV (Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus), MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) and SARS-CoV-2 cause severe life-threatening respiratory diseases [1]. Investigations indicated that SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV are transmitted from civet cats and dromedary camels, respectively [5]. Phylogenetic analysis data show that SARS-CoV-2 is closer to bat coronaviruses detected in China in Zhoushan in 2018 (Bat-SLCoVZC45 and Bat-SL-CoVZXC21, 88% identity) and in Yunnan in 2013 (Bat-CoV RaTG13, 96% identity) than to human coronaviruses SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV (79% and 50% identity, respectively) [7]
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