Peptide Mimicrying Between SARS Coronavirus Spike Protein and Human Proteins Reacts with SARS Patient Serum

K.-Y Hwa,T.-M Yeh,W M Lin,Y.-I Hou

doi:10.1155/2008/326464

Abstract

Molecular mimicry, defined as similar structures shared by molecules from dissimilar genes or proteins, is a general strategy used by pathogens to infect host cells. Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new human respiratory infectious disease caused by SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV). The spike (S) protein of SARS-CoV plays an important role in the virus entry into a cell. In this study, eleven synthetic peptides from the S protein were selected based on its sequence homology with human proteins. Two of the peptides D07 (residues 927–937) and D08 (residues 942–951) were recognized by the sera of SARS patients. Murine hyperimmune sera against these peptides bound to proteins of human lung epithelial cells A549. Another peptide D10 (residues 490–502) stimulated A549 to proliferate and secrete IL-8. The present results suggest that the selected S protein regions, which share sequence homology with human proteins, may play important roles in SARS-CoV infection.

Highlights

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new emerging infectious disease, which was first reported in China in 2002 and was rapidly spreading all over the world in 2003 [1, 2]
The whole amino acid sequence of spike protein was analyzed to find out the potential immunogenic regions and the regions shared sequence homology with human proteins, which is defined as the pathogenic regions
We have identified four pathogenic regions of SARS-CoV S protein which share sequence homology with different human proteins

Summary

Introduction

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a new emerging infectious disease, which was first reported in China in 2002 and was rapidly spreading all over the world in 2003 [1, 2]. About 10–15% of the patients would die due to the acute respiratory distress [3,4,5,6]. A novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV) was isolated from SARS patients [7,8,9]. SARS-CoV is a positive-stranded RNA virus with an envelop. The genome of SARS-CoV is around 29,727 nucleotides in length. The sequence was annotatedin silico [10]. Comparative genomic studies using the in silico annotated proteins have suggested that SARS virus belongs to a new group of coronavirus

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