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.