Department of Medical Statistics and Molecular Epidemiology, University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Department of Medical Biology, Izmir University of Economics, Izmir, Turkey.
J Med Virol. 2020 Oct;92(10):2232-2237. doi: 10.1002/jmv.26104. Epub 2020 Jun 19.
Italy is the first western country suffering heavy severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission and disease impact after coronavirus disease-2019 pandemia started in China. Even though the presence of mutations on spike glycoprotein and nucleocapsid in Italian isolates has been reported, the potential impact of these mutations on viral transmission has not been evaluated. We have compared SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from Italian patients with virus sequences from Chinese patients. We focussed upon three nonsynonymous mutations of genes coding for S(one) and N (two) viral proteins present in Italian isolates and absent in Chinese ones, using various bioinformatics tools. Amino acid analysis and changes in three-dimensional protein structure suggests the mutations reduce protein stability and, particularly for S1 mutation, the enhanced torsional ability of the molecule could favor virus binding to cell receptor(s). This theoretical interpretation awaits experimental and clinical confirmation.
意大利是继中国 2019 年冠状病毒病大流行开始后，第一个遭受严重急性呼吸系统综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）传播和疾病影响的西方国家。尽管已经报道了意大利分离株的刺突糖蛋白和核衣壳蛋白存在突变，但这些突变对病毒传播的潜在影响尚未得到评估。我们比较了来自意大利患者的 SARS-CoV-2 基因组序列和来自中国患者的病毒序列。我们使用各种生物信息学工具，重点研究了意大利分离株中存在而中国分离株中不存在的编码 S（一个）和 N（两个）病毒蛋白的三个非同义突变。氨基酸分析和三维蛋白质结构变化表明，这些突变降低了蛋白质的稳定性，特别是对于 S1 突变，分子的增强扭转能力可能有利于病毒与细胞受体的结合。这一理论解释有待实验和临床验证。
