On Wednesday, a study published in the Journal of Medical Virology showed that snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the novel coronavirus that had caused 17 deaths in central Chinas Hubei Province.

The Xinhua news agency reported that scientists from Peking University Health Science Center School of Basic Medical Sciences, the First affiliated Hospital of Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Ruikang Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Ningbo Universitys School of Medicine, and Wuhan University of Bioengineering carried out a comprehensive analysis on the current sequences of the newly identified coronavirus.

They used a method called "relative synonymous codon usage" (RSCU) bias to compare RNA sequences of different animal species. Snake was one of the animals being sold in Wuhans Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market before its closure. The market is believed to be linked to most of the infected cases.Results from the analyses proposed that the new virus 2019-nCoV appeared to be a recombinant virus between the bat coronavirus and an origin-unknown coronavirus.

The recombination occurred within the viral spike glycoprotein, which recognizes cell surface receptor. Also, their findings suggested that snake is the most probable wildlife animal reservoir for the 2019-nCoV based on its RSCU bias resembling snake compared to other animals. The research results also suggested that homologous recombination within the spike glycoprotein might have contributed to cross-species transmission from snake to humans. Glycoprotein is a group of conjugated proteins which contains small amounts of carbohydrates.

Accordingto U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Chinese health authorities have posted the full genome of 2019-nCoV in the genetic sequence database of U.S. National Institutes of Health and the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data.

Source: ET Healthworld