PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Brintnell, Erin
AU  - Gupta, Mehul
AU  - Anderson, Dave W
TI  - Detailed phylogenetic analysis of SARS-CoV-2 reveals latent capacity to bind human ACE2 receptor
AID  - 10.1101/2020.06.22.165787
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.06.22.165787
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/23/2020.06.22.165787.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/23/2020.06.22.165787.full
AB  - SARS-CoV-2 is a once-in-a-century pandemic, having emerged suddenly as a highly infectious viral pathogen. Previous phylogenetic analyses show its closest known evolutionary relative to be a virus isolated from bats (RaTG13), with a common assumption that SARS-CoV-2 evolved from a zoonotic ancestor via recent genetic changes (likely in the Spike protein receptor binding domain – or RBD) that enabled it to infect humans. We used detailed phylogenetic analysis, ancestral sequence reconstruction, and molecular dynamics simulations to examine the Spike-RBD’s functional evolution, finding to our surprise that it has likely possessed high affinity for human cell targets since at least 2013.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.