The DOI matches its Crossref record; 84 of the 84 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Coronaviruses Lacking Exoribonuclease Activity Are Susceptible to Lethal Mutagenesis: Evidence for Proofreading and Potential Therapeutics
Open accessAbstract
No therapeutics or vaccines currently exist for human coronaviruses (HCoVs). The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) epidemic in 2002-2003, and the recent emergence of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in April 2012, emphasize the high probability of future zoonotic HCoV emergence causing severe and lethal human disease. Additionally, the resistance of SARS-CoV to ribavirin (RBV) demonstrates the need to define new targets for inhibition of CoV replication. CoVs express a 3'-to-5' exoribonuclease in nonstructural protein 14 (nsp14-ExoN) that is required for high-fidelity replication and is conserved across the CoV family. All genetic and biochemical data support the hypothesis that nsp14-ExoN has an RNA proofreading function. Thus, we hypothesized that ExoN is responsible for CoV resistance to RNA mutagens. We demonstrate that while wild-type (ExoN+) CoVs were resistant to RBV and 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), CoVs lacking ExoN activity (ExoN-) were up to 300-fold more sensitive. While the primary antiviral activity of RBV against CoVs was not mutagenesis, ExoN- CoVs treated with 5-FU demonstrated both enhanced sensitivity during multi-cycle replication, as well as decreased specific infectivity, consistent with 5-FU functioning as a mutagen. Comparison of full-genome next-generation sequencing of 5-FU treated SARS-CoV populations revealed a 16-fold increase in the number of mutations within the ExoN- population as compared to ExoN+. Ninety percent of these mutations represented A:G and U:C transitions, consistent with 5-FU incorporation during RNA synthesis. Together our results constitute direct evidence that CoV ExoN activity provides a critical proofreading function during virus replication. Furthermore, these studies identify ExoN as the first viral protein distinct from the RdRp that determines the sensitivity of RNA viruses to mutagens. Finally, our results show the importance of ExoN as a target for inhibition, and suggest that small-molecule inhibitors of ExoN activity could be potential pan-CoV therapeutics in combination with RBV or RNA mutagens.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Analysis of Relative Gene Expression Data Using Real-Time Quantitative PCR and the 2−ΔΔCT Method
Livak, K. J., & Schmittgen, T. D. (2001) · Methods · doi:10.1006/meth.2001.1262 · Cited by 180,860
The Sequence Alignment/Map format and SAMtools
Li, H., Handsaker, B., Wysoker, A., Fennell, T., Ruan, J., Homer, N., Marth, G., Abecasis, G., Durbin, R., & 1000 Genome Project Data Processing Subgroup (2009) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp352 · Cited by 62,041
Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows-Wheeler transform
Li, H., & Durbin, R. (2009) · Bioinformatics · doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp324 · Cited by 58,607
Isolation of a Novel Coronavirus from a Man with Pneumonia in Saudi Arabia
Zaki, A. M., van Boheemen, S., Bestebroer, T. M., Osterhaus, A. D. M. E., & Fouchier, R. A. M. (2012) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa1211721 · Cited by 5,735
Identification of a novel coronavirus in patients with severe acute respiratory syndrome
Drosten, C., Günther, S., Preiser, W., van der Werf, S., Brodt, H.-R., Becker, S., Rabenau, H., Panning, M., Kolesnikova, L., Fouchier, R. A. M., et al. (2003) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa030747 · Cited by 4,574
A Novel Coronavirus Associated with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Ksiazek, T. G., Erdman, D., Goldsmith, C. S., Zaki, S. R., Peret, T., Emery, S., Tong, S., Urbani, C., Comer, J. A., Lim, W., et al. (2003) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejmoa030781 · Cited by 4,344
Coronavirus as a possible cause of severe acute respiratory syndrome
Peiris, J., Lai, S., Poon, L., Guan, Y., Yam, L., Lim, W., Nicholls, J., Yee, W., Yan, W., Cheung, M., et al. (2003) · The Lancet · doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(03)13077-2 · Cited by 2,915
Dipeptidyl peptidase 4 is a functional receptor for the emerging human coronavirus-EMC
Raj, V. S., Mou, H., Smits, S. L., Dekkers, D. H. W., Müller, M. A., Dijkman, R., Muth, D., Demmers, J. A. A., Zaki, A., Fouchier, R. A. M., et al. (2013) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature12005 · Cited by 2,061
Coronaviruses post-SARS: update on replication and pathogenesis
Perlman, S., & Netland, J. (2009) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro2147 · Cited by 1,764
Davis, G. L., Esteban-Mur, R., Rustgi, V., Hoefs, J., Gordon, S. C., Trepo, C., Shiffman, M. L., Zeuzem, S., Craxi, A., Ling, M.-H., et al. (1998) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199811193392102 · Cited by 1,282
Cited by
Korber, B., Fischer, W. M., Gnanakaran, S., Yoon, H., Theiler, J., Abfalterer, W., Hengartner, N., Giorgi, E. E., Bhattacharya, T., Foley, B., et al. (2020) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.06.043 · Cited by 4,281
SARS and MERS: recent insights into emerging coronaviruses
de Wit, E., van Doremalen, N., Falzarano, D., & Munster, V. J. (2016) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/nrmicro.2016.81 · Cited by 3,510
Spike mutation D614G alters SARS-CoV-2 fitness
Plante, J. A., Liu, Y., Liu, J., Xia, H., Johnson, B. A., Lokugamage, K. G., Zhang, X., Muruato, A. E., Zou, J., Fontes-Garfias, C. R., et al. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2895-3 · Cited by 1,558
Structural and Functional Analysis of the D614G SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Variant
Yurkovetskiy, L., Wang, X., Pascal, K. E., Tomkins-Tinch, C., Nyalile, T. P., Wang, Y., Baum, A., Diehl, W. E., Dauphin, A., Carbone, C., et al. (2020) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.09.032 · Cited by 1,025
Liu, Z., VanBlargan, L. A., Bloyet, L.-M., Rothlauf, P. W., Chen, R. E., Stumpf, S., Zhao, H., Errico, J. M., Theel, E. S., Liebeskind, M. J., et al. (2021) · Cell Host & Microbe · doi:10.1016/j.chom.2021.01.014 · Cited by 725
“As a result of ExoN activity, the frequency of escape from antibody neutralization by coronaviruses is less than for other RNA viruses lacking such an enzyme (Smith et al., 2013).”
Background
Metadata
- Authors
- Smith, E. C., Blanc, H., Vignuzzi, M., & Denison, M. R.
- Venue
- PLoS Pathogens
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-08-15
- Volume
- 9
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- e1003565
- ISSN
- 1553-7366 (ISSN-L)
- 1553-7374
- OpenAlex
- W1984259198
- Cited by
- 444
- References
- 84
- FWCI
- 12.12
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Coronaviruses Lacking Exoribonuclease Activity Are Susceptible to Lethal Mutagenesis: Evidence for Proofreading and Potential Therapeutics. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003565
- The paper
- Smith, E. C., Blanc, H., Vignuzzi, M., & Denison, M. R. (2013). Coronaviruses Lacking Exoribonuclease Activity Are Susceptible to Lethal Mutagenesis: Evidence for Proofreading and Potential Therapeutics. PLoS Pathogens. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1003565
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
