Abstract
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), that emerged in late 2019, is the etiologic agent of the current “coronavirus disease 2019” (COVID-19) pandemic, which has serious health implications and a significant global economic impact. Of the seven human coronaviruses, all of which have a zoonotic origin, the pandemic SARS-CoV-2, is the third emerging coronavirus, in the 21st century, highly pathogenic to the human population. Previous human coronavirus outbreaks (SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV) have already provided several valuable information on some of the common molecular and cellular mechanisms of coronavirus infections as well as their origin. However, to meet the new challenge caused by the SARS-CoV-2, a detailed understanding of the biological specificities, as well as knowledge of the origin are crucial to provide information on viral pathogenicity, transmission and epidemiology, and to enable strategies for therapeutic interventions and drug discovery. Therefore, in this review, we summarize the current advances in SARS-CoV-2 knowledges, in light of pre-existing information of other recently emerging coronaviruses. We depict the specificity of the immune response of wild bats and discuss current knowledge of the genetic diversity of bat-hosted coronaviruses that promotes viral genome expansion (accessory gene acquisition). In addition, we describe the basic virology of coronaviruses with a special focus SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we highlight, in detail, the current knowledge of genes and accessory proteins which we postulate to be the major keys to promote virus adaptation to specific hosts (bat and human), to contribute to the suppression of immune responses, as well as to pathogenicity.
Highlights
Reviewed by: Hatem Elshabrawy, Sam Houston State University, United States Leiliang Zhang, Shandong First Medical University, China
The diversity of Coronaviridae has greatly improved and a numerous of novel coronaviruses have been discovered in human: the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)-CoV-1 in 2003, the HCoV-NL63 in 2004, the HCoV HKU1 in 2005 (Woo et al, 2005), the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS)-CoV in 2012 (Zaki et al, 2012), and in a vast variety of animals especially several bat species throughout Africa, America, Asia and Europe (Poudel et al, 2020) until the discovery of SARSCoV-2 in late 2019, which adds to the list of six known HCoVs associated with different disease phenotypes, from common to highly pathogenic
The SARS-CoV-1, MERS-CoV and SARSCoV-2 are all human coronaviruses closely related to bat-SLCoVs
Summary
Reviewed by: Hatem Elshabrawy, Sam Houston State University, United States Leiliang Zhang, Shandong First Medical University, China. We depict the specificity of the immune response of wild bats and discuss current knowledge of the genetic diversity of bat-hosted coronaviruses that promotes viral genome expansion (accessory gene acquisition).
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