SARS-CoV-۲ as a betacoronavirus comprises five structural proteins?

Background and Aim : Dear editor, We read with interest a review article by Bakhshandeh et al. (Bakhshandeh et al., ۲۰۲۱). The authors considered hemagglutinin esterase (HE) as one of the structural proteins of SARS-CoV-۲ (Bakh- shandeh et al., ۲۰۲۱). Although, scientific evidences show that the genome of SARS-CoV-۲ lacks the HE gene and it has no hemagglutinin- esterase glycoprotein (Kumar et al., ۲۰۲۰; Anastasopoulou and Mouzaki, ۲۰۲۰; Crawford et al., ۲۰۲۰; Zhang et al., ۲۰۲۰). Thus, HE cannot be considered as an antigenic component in SARS-CoV-۲ and it has no role in SARS-CoV-۲ infection.Methods : SARS-CoV-۲ as a betacoronavirus contains a non-segmented posi- tive-sense, single-stranded RNA (Pal et al., ۲۰۲۰). The genome of SARS- CoV-۲ has been sequenced, and based on the genomic sequence, SARS- CoV-۲ shared ۷۹.۶% sequence identity to SARS-CoV and ۹۶% identity similar to bat coronavirus (Zhou et al., ۲۰۲۰). The genome organization of SARS-CoV-۲ is ۵’UTR-Rep-S-۳a-۳b-E-M-۶-۷a-۷b-۸-N-۱۰-۳’UTR (Abdel-Moneim and Abdelwhab, ۲۰۲۰).Results : Coronaviruses comprise four structural proteins spike (S), envelope (E), membrane protein (M), and nucleoprotein (N) (Fani et al., ۲۰۲۱), however, some betacoronaviruses such as OC۴۳-CoV, Bovine-CoV and HKU۱-CoV and, murine hepatitis virus encode hemagglutinin esterase (Lang et al., ۲۰۲۰). Therefore SARS-CoV-۲ lacks HE and comprises four structural proteins S, E, M and N.Conclusion : Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest for this manuscript entitle “SARS-CoV-۲ as a betacoronavirus comprises five structural proteins?”

کلیدواژه ها:

SARS-CoV-۲ ، betacoronavirus ، hemagglutinin esterase