PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Dominique Fourmy
AU  - Satoko Yoshizawa
TI  - A cytosine-to-uracil change within the programmed -1 ribosomal frameshift signal of SARS-CoV-2 results in structural similarities with the MERS-CoV signal
AID  - 10.1101/2020.06.26.174193
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.06.26.174193
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/26/2020.06.26.174193.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/26/2020.06.26.174193.full
AB  - The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the cause of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, like many other viruses, uses programmed ribosomal frameshifting (PRF) to enable synthesis of multiple proteins from its compact genome. In independent analyses, we evaluated the PRF regions of all SARS-CoV-2 sequences available in GenBank and from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data for variations. Of the 5,156 and 27,153 sequences analyzed, respectively, the PRF regions were identical in 95.7% and 97.2% of isolates. The most common change from the reference sequence was from C to U at position 13,536, which lies in the three-stemmed pseudoknot known to stimulate frameshifting. With the conversion of the G13493-C13536 Watson-Crick pair to G-U, the SARS-CoV-2 PRF closely resembles its counterpart in the Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. The occurrence of this change increased from 0.5 to 3% during the period of March to May 2020.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.