RmYN02 is a bat-derived strain of ''

Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus ''Severe acute respiratory syndrome–related coronavirus'' (SARSr-CoV or SARS-CoV)The terms ''SARSr-CoV'' and ''SARS-CoV'' are sometimes used interchangeably, especially prior to the discovery of SARS-CoV-2. This may cause confusion when some ...

''. It was discovered in bat droppings collected between May and October 2019 from sites in

Mengla County Mengla County (; Tai Lue: , ''Mueang La''; lo, ເມືອງລ້າ; th, เมืองล้า) is a county under the jurisdiction of the Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, in far southern Yunnan province, China. ''Meng'' is a vari ...

Yunnan Province Yunnan , () is a landlocked province in the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders the C ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. It is the second-closest known relative of

SARS-CoV-2 Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‑CoV‑2) is a strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), the respiratory illness responsible for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virus previously had a ...

, the virus strain that causes

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, sharing 93.3% nucleotide identity at the scale of the complete virus genome. RmYN02 contains an insertion at the S1/S2 cleavage site in the

spike protein In virology, a spike protein or peplomer protein is a protein that forms a large structure known as a spike or peplomer projecting from the surface of an enveloped virus. as cited in The proteins are usually glycoproteins that form dimers or ...

, similar to SARS-CoV-2, suggesting that such insertion events can occur naturally.

Genetics

It shares 93.3% genome with SARS-CoV-2. RmYN02 was 97.2% identical to SARS-CoV-2 in the 1ab. RmYN02 was 71.8% identical in nucleotide and 97.4% in amino acid to SARS-CoV-2 in the S gene, compared to 97.4% amino acid identity between RaTG13 and SARS-CoV-2. All genetic data were found by Weifeng Shi and his team.

Discovery

RmYN02 was collected between May and July, 2019, in Yunnan by Professor Alice C. Hughes from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, and sequenced by Weifeng Shi from Shandong Medical University, based on an analysis of 302 feces samples collected from 227 bats that were collected from Mengla County, Yunnan Province, China, within a short distance from the

Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), founded in 1959, is located in Mengla County, Xishuangbanna at 21º55' N, 101º15'E, covering an area of 1125 ha. Over 13,000 species of tropical plants a ...

. The genome itself was assembled from a pool of 11 samples.

References

SARS-CoV-2 Bat virome Coronaviridae Animal virology Sarbecovirus Zoonoses {{Virus-stub

Genetics

Discovery

See also

References