Isolation and characterization of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 in Turkey

Shaikh Terkis Islam Pavel,Can Holyavkin,Hazel Yetiskin,Muhammet Ali Uygut,Zehra Bestepe Dursun,İlhami Celik,Gunsu Aydin,Ceren Cevik,Aykut Ozdarendeli,Kui Li

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0238614

Shaikh Terkis Islam Pavel, Can Holyavkin + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238614

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Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and associated with severe respiratory illness emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019. The virus has been able to spread promptly across all continents in the world. The current pandemic has posed a great threat to public health concern and safety. Currently, there are no specific treatments or licensed vaccines available for COVID-19. We isolated SARS-CoV-2 from the nasopharyngeal sample of a patient in Turkey with confirmed COVID-19. We determined that the Vero E6 and MA-104 cell lines are suitable for supporting SARS-CoV-2 that supports viral replication, development of cytopathic effect (CPE) and subsequent cell death. Phylogenetic analyses of the whole genome sequences showed that the hCoV-19/Turkey/ERAGEM-001/2020 strain clustered with the strains primarily from Australia, Canada, England, Iran and Kuwait and that the cases in the nearby clusters were reported to have travel history to Iran and to share the common unique nucleotide substitutions.

Highlights

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are members of the family Coronaviridae, which consists of a group of enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses [1]
The primer set from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) [21] targeting the nucleocapsid protein gene (NP) of SARS-CoV-2 was used for the PCR reactions
Representative SARS-CoV-2 plaques in the Vero E6 cell monolayers infected with SARS-CoV-2 are shown in Fig 1F and 1G. These results suggest that a SARS-CoV-2 strain named hCoV-19/Turkey/ERAGEM-001/2020 was successfully isolated from the nasopharyngeal sample of a patient in Turkey with confirmed COVID-19

Summary

Introduction

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are members of the family Coronaviridae, which consists of a group of enveloped, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA viruses [1]. Transcription of coronaviruses requires a polymerase template switch, characterized as a discontinuous process unique among RNA viruses [2,3,4]. There are hundreds of coronaviruses are circulating broadly among mammals and birds that cause respiratory, enteric, hepatic, and neurologic diseases [1, 6, 7]. Six coronavirus species have been known to cause disease in humans. The 229E, OC43, NL63 and HKU1 viruses are prevalent and cause mild illness, such as the common cold [1, 8]. The other two viruses have been considered highly pathogenic in humans, and cause the diseases SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which resulted

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