In silico analysis of ACE2 orthologues to predict animal host range with high susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
In silico analysis of ACE2 orthologues to predict animal host range with high susceptibility to SARS‑CoV‑2 El Mehdi Bouricha1 · Mohammed Hakmi1 · Jihane Akachar1 · Lahcen Belyamani2 · Azeddine Ibrahimi1 Received: 22 June 2020 / Accepted: 7 October 2020 © King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology 2020
Abstract SARS-CoV-2, which causes severe pneumonia epidemics, probably originated from Chinese horseshoe bats, but the intermediate and host range is still unknown. ACE2 is the entry receptor for SARS-CoV-2. The binding capacity of SARSCoV-2 spike protein to ACE2 is the critical determinant of viral host range and cross-species infection. Here, we used an in silico approach to predict the potential animals range with high susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 by modelling and studying the Spike–ACE2 interaction of 22 domestic and wild animals. Our results showed that all studied animals are potentially susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection with a slight difference in the binding affinity and stability of their ACE2–RBD complexes. Furthermore, we identified a specific substitution of tyrosine to histidine at position 41 in ACE2 that likely reduces the affinity to SARS-CoV-2 in horses and greater horseshoe bats. These results may help to provide important insights into SARS-CoV-2 host range which will make it possible to control the spread of the virus and identify animal models that could be used for screening antiviral drugs or vaccine candidates against SARS-CoV-2. Keywords ACE2 orthologues · COVID-19 · SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility · Host range
Introduction Coronaviruses (CoVs) are members of the family Coronaviridae in the Nidovirales order. These viruses can infect a broad range of animals as well as humans, resulting in mild, common cold-like symptoms (Peiris 2012). Nevertheless, three deadly CoV epidemics have already occurred in the twenty-first century, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and the current COVID-19 outbreak. All of them involve emerging pathogenic CoVs, originated in animals and subsequently transmitted to humans (Fehr and Perlman 2015; Zhou et al. 2020). Phylogenetic studies indicate that SARS-CoV, MERSCoV and SARS-CoV-2 are zoonotic pathogens that probably * Azeddine Ibrahimi [email protected] 1
Medical Biotechnology Laboratory (MedBiotech), Rabat Medical and Pharmacy School, Mohammed Vth University in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco
Emergency Department, Military Hospital Mohammed V, Rabat Medical and Pharmacy School, Mohammed Vth University in Rabat, Rabat, Morocco
2
evolved from bats and were transmitted to humans through intermediate hosts which are the palm civets for SARS-CoV and camels for MERS-CoV (Zhou et al. 2020; Cui, Li, and Shi 2019). However, the intermediate host of SARS CoV-2 has not yet been identified (Liu et al. 2020). Coronaviruses comprise four structural proteins, including envelope (E), membrane (M), nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S) proteins (Du et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2020). The latter one plays a criti
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