No Species-level Losses of S2m Suggests Critical Role in Replication of SARS-related Coronaviruses

Overview

Journal Sci Rep

Specialty Science

Date 2021 Aug 10

PMID 34373516

Citations 15

Authors

Clement Gilbert

Torstein Tengs

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The genetic element s2m has been acquired through horizontal transfer by many distantly related viruses, including the SARS-related coronaviruses. Here we show that s2m is evolutionarily conserved in these viruses. Though several lineages of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) devoid of the element can be found, these variants seem to have been short lived, indicating that they were less evolutionary fit than their s2m-containing counterparts. On a species-level, however, there do not appear to be any losses and this pattern strongly suggests that the s2m element is essential to virus replication in SARS-CoV-2 and related viruses. Further experiments are needed to elucidate the function of s2m.

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