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

Author

Peng Zhou
Xing-Lou Yang
Xian-Guang Wang
Ben Hu

Files

Publication Date

1-1-2020

Volume Number

579

Abstract

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, bats1,2,3,4. Previous studies have shown that some bat SARSr-CoVs have the potential to infect humans5,6,7. 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.

Document Type

Article

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

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

Language

English

Recommended Citation

Zhou, Peng; Yang, Xing-Lou; Wang, Xian-Guang; and Hu, Ben, "A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin" (2020). KIP Articles. 6680.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/kip_articles/6680