PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Pradhan, Prashant AU - Pandey, Ashutosh Kumar AU - Mishra, Akhilesh AU - Gupta, Parul AU - Tripathi, Praveen Kumar AU - Menon, Manoj Balakrishnan AU - Gomes, James AU - Vivekanandan, Perumal AU - Kundu, Bishwajit TI - Uncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HIV-1 gp120 and Gag AID - 10.1101/2020.01.30.927871 DP - 2020 Jan 01 TA - bioRxiv PG - 2020.01.30.927871 4099 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/31/2020.01.30.927871.short 4100 - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/31/2020.01.30.927871.full AB - We are currently witnessing a major epidemic caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.