Genetic relatedness of the novel human group C betacoronavirus to Tylonycteris bat coronavirus HKU4 and Pipistrellus bat coronavirus HKU5

Woo, Patrick CY; Lau, Susanna KP; Li, Kenneth SM; Tsang, Alan KL; Yuen, Kwok-Yung

The recent outbreak of severe respiratory tract infections associated with a novel human group C betacoronavirus originating from Saudi Arabia has drawn global attention to another highly probable ''SARS-like'' interspecies jumping event of coronavirus (CoV) from animal to human. In June 2012, a novel CoV was isolated using Vero cells from the lung tissue of a 60-year-old resident of Saudi Arabia with fatal acute pneumonia and renal failure. In September 2012, another 49-year-old male resident of Qatar with severe acute pneumonia and renal failure and recent travel history to Saudi Arabia was admitted to an intensive care unit in Qatar. RT-PCR and sequencing of a short fragment of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) confirmed the presence of the same CoV as detected in the first Saudi Arabian case. 1 Complete genome sequencing of the virus isolated from the first patient was performed by Fouchier et al. at the Erasmus University Medical Centre, the Netherlands, and the sequence was released on September 28, 2012 (GenBank accession NO JX869059 and named as human betacoronavirus 2c EMC/2012). So far, there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission. The source of the virus remains obscure. In this article, this novel human group C betaCoV is abbreviated as HCoV-EMC.