Recently, the team of Associate Prof. WANG Yong from the School of Food and Biological Engineering collaborated with Profs. Chen KP and Yao Q of the School of Life Sciences published a paper entitled "Human SARS-CoV-2 has evolved to reduce CG dinucleotide in its open reading frame" in Scientific Reports from the publishers of Nature.

This study revealed  that CG reduction in SARS‑CoV‑2 is achieved mainly through mutating C/G into A/T, and CG is the best target for mutation. Meanwhile, 5′‑untranslated region of SARS‑CoV‑2 has high CG content and is capable of forming an internal ribosome entry site (IRES) to recruit host ribosome for translating its RNA. These features allow SARS‑CoV‑2 to reproduce efficiently in host cells. Notably, genomes of cellular organisms also have very low CG abundance, suggesting that mutating C/G into A/T occurs universally in all life forms.

In addition, the study compared the virulence levels of 24 coronavirus, and found that Human MERS (Middle East respiratory syndrome) coronavirus has very high virulence and SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) coronavirus has high virulence, but SARS-CoV-2 has medium virulence. It means that a coronavirus with medium virulence is more likely to spread rapidly. In comparison, a coronavirus with high or very high virulence could kill its host before causing severe epidemic, whereas a coronavirus with low or very low virulence is not able to replicate itself efficiently for further transmission.

Assoc. Prof. Wang’s main research interests include genomics and molecular evolution. The associated research results on Analysis of Gene Evolution and Evolutionary Mechanism of Intron Sequences have been published in journals like "Molecular Genetics & Genomics", "Evolutionary Bioinformatics", "Scientific Reports" etc. Profs. Chen KP and Yao Q are world-renowned experts in the field of insect viruses, The International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) approved the establishment of the novel Two-Division DNA Virus Family based on their research results, and defined the Bombyx moribidensovirus (BmBDV) they studied as the representative species of the newly created family.

Original link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-69342-y