📄 Origin and possible genetic recombination of the middle east respiratory syndrome coronavirus from the first imported case in china: Phylogenetics and coalescence analysis

© 2015 Wang et al. The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) causes a severe acute respiratory tract infection with a high fatality rate in humans. Coronaviruses are capable of infecting multiple species and can evolve rapidly through recombination events. Here, we report the complete genomic sequence analysis of a MERS-CoV strain imported to China from South Korea. The imported virus, provisionally named ChinaGD01, belongs to group 3 in clade B in the whole-genome phylogenetic tree and also has a similar tree topology structure in the open reading frame 1a and-b (ORF1ab) gene segment but clusters with group 5 of clade B in the tree constructed using the S gene. Genetic recombination analysis and lineage-specific singlenucleotide polymorphism (SNP) comparison suggest that the imported virus is a recombinant comprising group 3 and group 5 elements. The time-resolved phylogenetic estimation indicates that the recombination event likely occurred in the second half of 2014. Genetic recombination events between group 3 and group 5 of clade B may have implications for the transmissibility of the virus.

keywords 🔗 severe acute (1373) 🔗 syndrome coronavirus (1074) 🔗 sequence analysis (118) 🔗 recombination events (46) 🔗 reading frame (222) 🔗 fatality rate (123) 🔗 respiratory syndrome (2004) 🔗 respiratory tract (344) 🔗 acute respiratory (1734) 🔗 open reading (215)

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