Probable Pangolin Origin of SARS-CoV-2 Associated with the COVID-19 Outbreak

Curr Biol. 2020 Apr 6;30(7):1346-1351.e2. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.03.022. Epub 2020 Mar 19.

Abstract

An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) began in the city of Wuhan in China and has widely spread worldwide. Currently, it is vital to explore potential intermediate hosts of SARS-CoV-2 to control COVID-19 spread. Therefore, we reinvestigated published data from pangolin lung samples from which SARS-CoV-like CoVs were detected by Liu et al. [1]. We found genomic and evolutionary evidence of the occurrence of a SARS-CoV-2-like CoV (named Pangolin-CoV) in dead Malayan pangolins. Pangolin-CoV is 91.02% and 90.55% identical to SARS-CoV-2 and BatCoV RaTG13, respectively, at the whole-genome level. Aside from RaTG13, Pangolin-CoV is the most closely related CoV to SARS-CoV-2. The S1 protein of Pangolin-CoV is much more closely related to SARS-CoV-2 than to RaTG13. Five key amino acid residues involved in the interaction with human ACE2 are completely consistent between Pangolin-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, but four amino acid mutations are present in RaTG13. Both Pangolin-CoV and RaTG13 lost the putative furin recognition sequence motif at S1/S2 cleavage site that can be observed in the SARS-CoV-2. Conclusively, this study suggests that pangolin species are a natural reservoir of SARS-CoV-2-like CoVs.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; origin; pangolin.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Animals
  • Betacoronavirus / genetics*
  • Betacoronavirus / isolation & purification*
  • COVID-19
  • Chiroptera
  • Coronavirus Infections / virology*
  • Disease Reservoirs / virology*
  • Eutheria / virology*
  • Genome, Viral
  • Malaysia
  • Pandemics
  • Phylogeny
  • Pneumonia, Viral / virology*
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Sequence Alignment
  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus / chemistry

Substances

  • Spike Glycoprotein, Coronavirus
  • spike protein, SARS-CoV-2