Emerging Microbes and Infections (Jan 2020)

Discovery of a subgenotype of human coronavirus NL63 associated with severe lower respiratory tract infection in China, 2018

  • Yanqun Wang,
  • Xin Li,
  • Wenkuan Liu,
  • Mian Gan,
  • Lu Zhang,
  • Jin Wang,
  • Zhaoyong Zhang,
  • Airu Zhu,
  • Fang Li,
  • Jing Sun,
  • Guoxian Zhang,
  • Zhen Zhuang,
  • Jiaying Luo,
  • Dehui Chen,
  • Shuyan Qiu,
  • Li Zhang,
  • Duo Xu,
  • Chris Ka Pun Mok,
  • Fuchun Zhang,
  • Jingxian Zhao,
  • Rong Zhou,
  • Jincun Zhao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/22221751.2020.1717999
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 9, no. 1
pp. 246 – 255

Abstract

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ABSTRACTHuman coronavirus NL63 (HCoV-NL63) is primarily associated with common cold in children, elderly and immunocompromised individuals. Outbreaks caused by HCoV-NL63 are rare. Here we report a cluster of HCoV-NL63 cases with severe lower respiratory tract infection that arose in Guangzhou, China, in 2018. Twenty-three hospitalized children were confirmed to be HCoV-NL63 positive, and most of whom were hospitalized with severe pneumonia or acute bronchitis. Whole genomes of HCoV-NL63 were obtained using next-generation sequencing. Phylogenetic and single amino acid polymorphism analyses showed that this outbreak was associated with two subgenotypes (C3 and B) of HCoV-NL63. Half of patients were identified to be related to a new subgenotype C3. One unique amino acid mutation at I507 L in spike protein receptor binding domain (RBD) was detected, which segregated this subgenotype C3 from other known subgenotypes. Pseudotyped virus bearing the I507 L mutation in RBD showed enhanced entry into host cells as compared to the prototype virus. This study proved that HCoV-NL63 was undergoing continuous mutation and has the potential to cause severe lower respiratory disease in humans.

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