PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Jiao-Mei Huang
AU  - Syed Sajid Jan
AU  - Xiaobin Wei
AU  - Yi Wan
AU  - Songying Ouyang
TI  - Evidence of the Recombinant Origin and Ongoing Mutations in Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
AID  - 10.1101/2020.03.16.993816
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.03.16.993816
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/19/2020.03.16.993816.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/19/2020.03.16.993816.full
AB  - The recent global outbreak of viral pneumonia designated as Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) by coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has threatened global public health and urged to investigate its source. Whole genome analysis of SARS-CoV-2 revealed ~96% genomic similarity with bat CoV (RaTG13) and clustered together in phylogenetic tree. Furthermore, RaTGl3 also showed 97.43% spike protein similarity with SARS-CoV-2 suggesting that RaTGl3 is the closest strain. However, RBD and key amino acid residues supposed to be crucial for human-to-human and cross-species transmission are homologues between SARS-CoV-2 and pangolin CoVs. These results from our analysis suggest that SARS-CoV-2 is a recombinant virus of bat and pangolin CoVs. Moreover, this study also reports mutations in coding regions of 125 SARS-CoV-2 genomes signifying its aptitude for evolution. In short, our findings propose that homologous recombination has been occurred between bat and pangolin CoVs that triggered cross-species transmission and emergence of SARS-CoV-2, and, during the ongoing outbreak, SARS-CoV-2 is still evolving for its adaptability.