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

• Published in: Nature Vol. 579; no. 7798; pp. 270 - 273
• Main Authors: Zhou, Peng, Yang, Xing-Lou, Wang, Xian-Guang, Hu, Ben, Zhang, Lei, Zhang, Wei, Si, Hao-Rui, Zhu, Yan, Li, Bei, Huang, Chao-Lin, Chen, Hui-Dong, Chen, Jing, Luo, Yun, Guo, Hua, Jiang, Ren-Di, Liu, Mei-Qin, Chen, Ying, Shen, Xu-Rui, Wang, Xi, Zheng, Xiao-Shuang, Zhao, Kai, Chen, Quan-Jiao, Deng, Fei, Liu, Lin-Lin, Yan, Bing, Zhan, Fa-Xian, Wang, Yan-Yi, Xiao, Geng-Fu, Shi, Zheng-Li
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.03.2020; Nature Publishing Group; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: 631/326/421; 631/326/596; 631/326/596/4130; ACE2; Alveoli; Amino acid sequence; Analysis; Angiotensin; Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2; Animals; Antibodies, Viral - blood; Bats; Betacoronavirus - classification; Betacoronavirus - genetics; Betacoronavirus - metabolism; Betacoronavirus - ultrastructure; Bronchus; Cell Line; China - epidemiology; Chiroptera - virology; Chlorocebus aethiops; Comparative analysis; Conserved sequence; Coronaviridae; Coronavirus Infections - epidemiology; Coronavirus Infections - virology; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Disease Outbreaks; Disease transmission; Enzymes; Epidemics; Female; Gene sequencing; Genes; Genetic aspects; Genome, Viral - genetics; Genomes; Humanities and Social Sciences; Humans; Infections; Laboratories; Lavage; Male; multidisciplinary; Nucleotide sequence; Outbreaks; Patients; Peptidyl-dipeptidase A; Peptidyl-Dipeptidase A - metabolism; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Pneumonia; Pneumonia, Viral - epidemiology; Pneumonia, Viral - virology; Proteins; Respiratory diseases; RNA polymerase; SARS-CoV-2; Science; Science (multidisciplinary); Seafood; Sequence analysis; Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome; Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus - classification; Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus - genetics; Statistics; Structural proteins; Vero Cells; Viral diseases; Viral infections; Viruses; China
• ISSN: 0028-0836; 1476-4687
• DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7

Since the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) 18 years ago, a large number of SARS-related coronaviruses (SARSr-CoVs) have been discovered in their natural reservoir host, bats 1 – 4 . Previous studies have shown that some bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans 5 – 7 . Here we report the identification and characterization of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV), which caused an epidemic of acute respiratory syndrome in humans in Wuhan, China. The epidemic, which started on 12 December 2019, had caused 2,794 laboratory-confirmed infections including 80 deaths by 26 January 2020. Full-length genome sequences were obtained from five patients at an early stage of the outbreak. The sequences are almost identical and share 79.6% sequence identity to SARS-CoV. Furthermore, we show that 2019-nCoV 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. In addition, 2019-nCoV virus isolated from the bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of a critically ill patient could be neutralized by sera from several patients. Notably, we confirmed that 2019-nCoV uses the same cell entry receptor—angiotensin converting enzyme II (ACE2)—as SARS-CoV. Characterization of full-length genome sequences from patients infected with a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) shows that the sequences are nearly identical and indicates that the virus is related to a bat coronavirus.