A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin

Corresponding author: Zheng-Li Shi

Affiliations: CAS Key Laboratory of Special Pathogens, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Center for Biosafety Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China; Wuhan Jin Yin-Tan Hospital, Wuhan, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; Hubei Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Wuhan, China.

Publication date: this article was published on February 3, 2020. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7 

Highlights

In this article, researchers obtained full-length genome sequences from five patients at the early stage of the outbreak. The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV. Furthermore, they show that the 2019 novel coronavirus is 96% identical at the whole-genome level to a bat coronavirus. Pairwise protein sequence analysis of seven conserved non-structural proteins domains show that this virus belongs to the species of SARSr-CoV. Notably, they confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry receptor-angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2)-as SARS-CoV.

Nomination Reasons

The researchers reported the identification and characterization of the 2019 novel coronavirus shortly after the pandemic began. Notably, they confirmed that 2019 novel coronavirus uses the same cell entry receptor-angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2) as SARS-CoV.

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