Trends in Microbiology
Volume 23, Issue 8, August 2015, Pages 468-478
Journal home page for Trends in Microbiology

Feature Review
Bat-to-human: spike features determining ‘host jump’ of coronaviruses SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and beyond

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tim.2015.06.003Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Bats are natural reservoirs of many coronaviruses that can infect humans.

  • Mechanisms of cross-species transmission of coronaviruses are important scientific questions.

  • The coronaviral spike protein is an important viral determinant of cross-species transmission.

  • Receptor-binding characteristics and cleavage priming of the spike protein are summarized.

Both severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) are zoonotic pathogens that crossed the species barriers to infect humans. The mechanism of viral interspecies transmission is an important scientific question to be addressed. These coronaviruses contain a surface-located spike (S) protein that initiates infection by mediating receptor-recognition and membrane fusion and is therefore a key factor in host specificity. In addition, the S protein needs to be cleaved by host proteases before executing fusion, making these proteases a second determinant of coronavirus interspecies infection. Here, we summarize the progress made in the past decade in understanding the cross-species transmission of SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV by focusing on the features of the S protein, its receptor-binding characteristics, and the cleavage process involved in priming.

Keywords

coronavirus
interspecies transmission
viral and host determinants
spike (S)
SARS-CoV
MERS-CoV

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