Nature Communications (Sep 2021)

Functional comparison of MERS-coronavirus lineages reveals increased replicative fitness of the recombinant lineage 5

  • Simon Schroeder,
  • Christin Mache,
  • Hannah Kleine-Weber,
  • Victor M. Corman,
  • Doreen Muth,
  • Anja Richter,
  • Diana Fatykhova,
  • Ziad A. Memish,
  • Megan L. Stanifer,
  • Steeve Boulant,
  • Mitra Gultom,
  • Ronald Dijkman,
  • Stephan Eggeling,
  • Andreas Hocke,
  • Stefan Hippenstiel,
  • Volker Thiel,
  • Stefan Pöhlmann,
  • Thorsten Wolff,
  • Marcel A. Müller,
  • Christian Drosten

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25519-1
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 13

Abstract

Read online

MERS-CoV is enzootic in dromedary camels, can spread to humans but undergoes limited onward transmission. Here, Schroeder et al. compare clinical isolates of MERS-CoV in vitro and show that the predominantly circulating recombinant lineage 5 possess a fitness advantage over parental lineage 3 and 4 due to reduced activation of innate immune signaling.