Circulation of genetically distinct contemporary human coronavirus OC43 strains

By L. Vijgen, E. Keyaerts, Philippe Lemey, E. Moës, Sandra Li, Anne-Mieke Vandamme, M. Van Ranst. 2005

85 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this study, we report the complete genome sequence of two contemporary human coronavirus OC43 (HCoV-OC43) strains detected in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Comparative genetic analyses of the circulating strains and the prototype HCoV-OC43 strain (ATCC VR759) were performed. Remarkably, a lower than expected similarity is found between the complete genomes and more in particular between the spike genes of the BE03 and BE04 strains. This finding suggests the existence of two genetically distinct HCoV-OC43 strains, circulating in Belgium in 2003 and 2004. Spike gene sequencing of three additional 2003 and two additional 2004 HCoV-OC43 strains, and subsequent phylogenetic analysis confirm this assumption. Compared to the ATCC prototype HCoV-OC43 strain, an important amino acid substitution is present in the potential cleavage site sequence of the spike protein of all contemporary strains, restoring the N-RRXRR-C motif, associated with increased spike protein cleavability in bovine coronaviruses. We here describe specific characteristics associated with circulating HCoV-OC43 strains, and we provide substantial evidence for the genetic variability of HCoV-OC43.

Subfields: Animal Science and Zoology, Infectious Diseases

Citations in the corpus

Coronaviruses: An Overview of Their Replication and Pathogenesis (2015, unknown): “HCoV-229E isolates from around the world have only minimal sequence divergence [ 80 ], while HCoV-OC43 isolates from the same location but isolated in different years show signifi cant genetic variability [ 81 ].”
Tracking Changes in SARS-CoV-2 Spike: Evidence that D614G Increases Infectivity of the COVID-19 Virus (2020, unknown): “Antigenic drift is seen among the common cold coronaviruses OC43 (Ren et al., 2015; Vijgen et al., 2005) and 229E (Chibo and Birch, 2006) and in SARSCoV-1 (Guan et al.”
Genetic drift of human coronavirus OC43 spike gene during adaptive evolution (2015, unknown): “HCoV-OC43 is the most prevalent CoV in humans and the relatively abundant number of clinical cases and corresponding epidemiological data make it a good model for HCoV adaption evolution 1, 5, 9, [15] [16] [17] .”
Molecular Epidemiology of Human Coronavirus OC43 Reveals Evolution of Different Genotypes over Time and Recent Emergence of a Novel Genotype due to Natural Recombination (2011, unknown): “Only five complete genome sequences of HCoV-OC43, two from the same American Type Culture Collection (ATCC) strain, VR759, that was isolated in 1967, one Paris strain that was isolated in 2001, and two Belgium strains detected in 2003 and 2004, were available in GenBank (39, 47, 48).”