PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Georgina Gonzalez-Isunza
AU  - M. Zaki Jawaid
AU  - Pengyu Liu
AU  - Daniel L. Cox
AU  - Mariel Vazquez
AU  - Javier Arsuaga
TI  - Using machine learning to detect coronaviruses potentially infectious to humans
AID  - 10.1101/2022.12.11.520008
DP  - 2022 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2022.12.11.520008
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/12/12/2022.12.11.520008.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2022/12/12/2022.12.11.520008.full
AB  - Establishing the host range for novel viruses remains a challenge. Here, we address the challenge of identifying non-human animal coronaviruses that may infect humans by creating an artificial neural network model that learns from the binding of the spike protein of alpha and beta coronaviruses to their host receptor. The proposed method produces a human-Binding Potential (h-BiP) score that distinguishes, with high accuracy, the binding potential among human coronaviruses. Two viruses, previously unknown to bind human receptors, were identified: Bat coronavirus BtCoV/133/2005 (a MERS related virus) and Rhinolophus affinis coronavirus isolate LYRa3 a SARS related virus. We further analyze the binding properties of these viruses using molecular dynamics. To test whether this model can be used for surveillance of novel coronaviruses, we re-trained the model on a set that excludes SARS-COV-2 viral sequences. The results predict the binding of SARS-CoV-2 with a human receptor, indicating that machine learning methods are an excellent tool for the prediction of host expansion events.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.