Fast assessment of human receptor-binding capability of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Qiang Huang; Andreas Herrmann

Coronaviruses (CoV) are positive-stranded enveloped RNA viruses belonging to the order Nidovirales, and are classified into four genera: a, b, d and g. Two of the b-CoVs, the server acute respiratory syndrome CoV (SARS-CoV) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome CoV (MERS-CoV), have caused serious epidemics. In November 2002, SARS emerged in southern China and then was spreading across the world in 2003, resulting in ~8,000 cases with a fatality rate of about 10% (WHO, 2004) . Ten years later, MERS emerged in Saudi Arabia and spread to different countries with a fatality rate of about 35% (WHO, 2016) . Both viruses are of zoonotic nature: SARS-CoV originates from bats/civet cats (Ge et al., 2013) , and the major reservoir for MERS-CoV is dromedary camels (Reusken et al., 2016) . Nevertheless, both viruses can be transmitted from human to human (de Wit et al., 2016) .