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Molecular Evolution of MERS Coronavirus: Dromedaries as a Recent Intermediate Host or Long-Time Animal Reservoir?

Susanna K P Lau | Antonio C P Wong | Terrence C K Lau | Patrick C Y Woo
International journal of molecular sciences | 2017

While dromedary camels are the immediate animal source of MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV) infection, the evolutionary origin of MERS-CoV remains obscure. We analyzed 219 camel and human MERS-CoV genome sequences available in GenBank. Phylogenetic analysis showed that 5 and 214 strains belong to clade A and B, respectively, with clade A further divided into lineage A1 (3 human strains) and lineage A2 (2 camel strains), and clade B divided into B1 to B6 (each containing both human and camel strains). Recombination analysis showed potential recombination events in five strains from dromedaries in Saudi Arabia, with recombination between lineage B5 and B3 in four strains, and between lineage B3 and B4 in one strain. The spike protein showed the highest number of amino acid substitutions, especially between A2 and other lineages, and contained positively selected codons. Notably, codon 1020 was positively selected among B and B5 strains, and can distinguish between clade A (Q1020) and B (R1020/H1020) strains, suggesting that this residue may play a role in the evolution of S protein during divergence of different lineages. The time of the most recent common ancestor of all MERS-CoV was dated to approximately 2010. The implications on the role of camels in the evolution of MERS-CoV are discussed.

Pubmed ID: 29035289

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GenBank (tool)

RRID:SCR_002760

NIH genetic sequence database that provides annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences for almost 280 000 formally described species (Jan 2014) .These sequences are obtained primarily through submissions from individual laboratories and batch submissions from large-scale sequencing projects, including whole-genome shotgun (WGS) and environmental sampling projects. Most submissions are made using web-based BankIt or standalone Sequin programs, and GenBank staff assigns accession numbers upon data receipt. It is part of International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration and daily data exchange with European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) and DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) ensures worldwide coverage. GenBank is accessible through NCBI Entrez retrieval system, which integrates data from major DNA and protein sequence databases along with taxonomy, genome, mapping, protein structure and domain information, and biomedical journal literature via PubMed. BLAST provides sequence similarity searches of GenBank and other sequence databases. Complete bimonthly releases and daily updates of GenBank database are available by FTP.

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DataMonkey (tool)

RRID:SCR_010278

A free public server for comparative analysis of sequence alignments using state-of-the-art statistical models. This service is brought to you by the viral evolution group at the School Of Medicine of the University of California, San Diego.

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Clustal W2 (tool)

RRID:SCR_002909

THIS RESOURCE IS NO LONGER IN SERVICE, documented on January 19, 2022. Command line version of multiple sequence alignment program Clustal for DNA or proteins. Alignment is progressive and considers sequence redundancy. No longer being maintained. Please consider using Clustal Omega instead which accepts nucleic acid or protein sequences in multiple sequence formats NBRF/PIR, EMBL/UniProt, Pearson (FASTA), GDE, ALN/ClustalW, GCG/MSF, RSF.

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BioEdit (tool)

RRID:SCR_007361

Software tool as biological sequence alignment editor written for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/7 and sequence analysis program. Provides sequence manipulation and analysis options and links to external analysis programs to view and manipulate sequences with simple point and click operations.

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BEAST (tool)

RRID:SCR_010228

A cross-platform software program for Bayesian MCMC analysis of molecular sequences. It is entirely orientated towards rooted, time-measured phylogenies inferred using strict or relaxed molecular clock models. It can be used as a method of reconstructing phylogenies but is also a framework for testing evolutionary hypotheses without conditioning on a single tree topology. BEAST uses MCMC to average over tree space, so that each tree is weighted proportional to its posterior probability. We include a simple to use user-interface program for setting up standard analyses and a suit of programs for analysing the results.

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PhyML (tool)

RRID:SCR_014629

Web phylogeny server based on the maximum-likelihood principle.

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