The SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein has a broad tropism for mammalian ACE2 proteins

by Carina Conceicao, Nazia Thakur, Stacey Human, James T. Kelly, Leanne Logan, Dagmara Bialy, Sushant Bhat, Phoebe Stevenson-Leggett, Adrian K. Zagrajek, Philippa Hollinghurst, Michal Varga, Christina Tsirigoti, Matthew Tully, Chris Chiu, Katy Moffat, Adrian Paul Silesian, John A. Hammond, Helena J. Maier, Erica Bickerton, Holly Shelton, Isabelle Dietrich, Stephen C. Graham, Dalan Bailey SARS Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in late 2019, leading to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that continues to cause significant global mortality in human populations. Given its sequence similarity to SARS-CoV, as well as related coronaviruses circulating in bats, SARS-CoV-2 i s thought to have originated in Chiroptera species in China. However, whether the virus spread directly to humans or through an intermediate host is currently unclear, as is the potential for this virus to infect companion animals, livestock, and wildlife that could act as viral reservoirs. Using a combination of surrogate entry assays and live virus, we demonstrate that, in addition to human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), the Spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 has a broad host tropism for mammalian ACE2 receptors, despite divergence in the amino acids at the Spike receptor binding site on these proteins. Of the 22 different hosts we investigated, ACE2 proteins from dog, cat, and cattle were the most permissive to SARS-CoV-2, while bat and bird ACE2 proteins were the least efficiently used r...
Source: PLoS Biology: Archived Table of Contents - Category: Biology Authors: Source Type: research