Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses
Open accessAbstract
The spike protein is a focused target of COVID-19, a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. A 12-nt insertion at S1/S2 in the spike coding sequence yields a furin cleavage site, which raised controversy views on origin of the virus. Here we analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of coronavirus spike proteins and mapped furin recognition motif on the tree. Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2.
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Furin cleavage sites occur naturally in almost every coronavirus family, but they have not been observed in other SARS-related coronaviruses.
“Furin cleavage sites are found naturally in almost every family of coronavirus,50, 51 although they have not been observed in other SARS-related coronaviruses (subgenus Sarbecoronavirus).”
From The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic (2022) · cites this paper as [50]
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Cryo-EM structure of the 2019-nCoV spike in the prefusion conformation
Wrapp, D., Wang, N., Corbett, K. S., Goldsmith, J. A., Hsieh, C.-L., Abiona, O., Graham, B. S., & McLellan, J. S. (2020) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.abb2507 · Cited by 8,897 · see citing works
Structural and Functional Basis of SARS-CoV-2 Entry by Using Human ACE2
Wang, Q., Zhang, Y., Wu, L., Niu, S., Song, C., Zhang, Z., Lu, G., Qiao, C., Hu, Y., Yuen, K.-Y., et al. (2020) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.03.045 · Cited by 2,892 · see citing works
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The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic
Sachs, J. D., Karim, S. S. A., Aknin, L., Allen, J., Brosbøl, K., Colombo, F., Barron, G. C., Espinosa, M. F., Gaspar, V., Gaviria, A., et al. (2022) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(22)01585-9 · Cited by 842 · see citing works
- Authors
- Wu, Y., & Zhao, S.
- Affiliations
- ShanghaiTech University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Wu, Yiran
- Zhao, Suwen
- ORCID
- Venue
- Stem Cell Research
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2021-01
- Volume
- 50
- Pages
- 102115
- ISSN
- 1873-5061 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC7836551
- OpenAlex
- W3110997654
- Cited by
- 117
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 20 · 2023: 13 · 2022: 39 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 2.53
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Stem Cell Research (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- ShanghaiTech University
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Infectious Diseases › SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Animal Virus Infections Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Evolution and Genetic Dynamics
- Keywords
- furin cleavage site, SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus spike protein, phylogenetic analysis, viral evolution, COVID-19 origin
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