Isolation of SARS-CoV-2-related coronavirus from Malayan pangolins
Kangpeng Xiao, Junqiong Zhai, Yaoyu Feng, Niu Zhou, Xu Zhang, Jie-Jian Zou, Na Li, Yaqiong Guo, Xiaobing Li, Xuejuan Shen, Zhipeng Zhang, Fanfan Shu, Wanyi Huang, Yu Li, Ziding Zhang, Rui-Ai Chen, Ya-Jiang Wu, Shi-Ming Peng, Mian Huang, Wei-Jun Xie, Qin-Hui Cai, Fang-Hui Hou, Wu Chen, Lihua Xiao & Yongyi Shen
Nature (2020)
Abstract
The outbreak of COVID-19 poses unprecedent challenges to global health1. The new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, shares high sequence identity to SARS-CoV and a bat coronavirus RaTG132. While bats may be the reservoir host for various coronaviruses3,4, whether SARS-CoV-2 has other hosts remains ambiguous. In this study, one coronavirus isolated from a Malayan pangolin showed 100%, 98.6%, 97.8% and 90.7% amino acid identity with SARS-CoV-2 in the E, M, N and S genes, respectively. In particular, the receptor-binding domain within the S protein of the Pangolin-CoV is virtually identical to that of SARS-CoV-2, with one noncritical amino acid difference. Results of comparative genomic analysis suggest that SARS-CoV-2 might have originated from the recombination of a Pangolin-CoV-like virus with a Bat-CoV-RaTG13-like virus. The Pangolin-CoV was detected in 17 of 25 Malayan pangolins analyzed.
