VOOZH about

URL: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34638137/

⇱ The Neighborhood of the Spike Gene Is a Hotspot for Modular Intertypic Homologous and Nonhomologous Recombination in Coronavirus Genomes - PubMed


Clipboard, Search History, and several other advanced features are temporarily unavailable.
Skip to main page content
👁 Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

👁 Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation

Add to Collections

Add to My Bibliography

Your saved search

Create a file for external citation management software

Your RSS Feed

Abstract

Coronaviruses (CoVs) have very large RNA viral genomes with a distinct genomic architecture of core and accessory open reading frames (ORFs). It is of utmost importance to understand their patterns and limits of homologous and nonhomologous recombination, because such events may affect the emergence of novel CoV strains, alter their host range, infection rate, tissue tropism pathogenicity, and their ability to escape vaccination programs. Intratypic recombination among closely related CoVs of the same subgenus has often been reported; however, the patterns and limits of genomic exchange between more distantly related CoV lineages (intertypic recombination) need further investigation. Here, we report computational/evolutionary analyses that clearly demonstrate a substantial ability for CoVs of different subgenera to recombine. Furthermore, we show that CoVs can obtain-through nonhomologous recombination-accessory ORFs from core ORFs, exchange accessory ORFs with different CoV genera, with other viruses (i.e., toroviruses, influenza C/D, reoviruses, rotaviruses, astroviruses) and even with hosts. Intriguingly, most of these radical events result from double crossovers surrounding the Spike ORF, thus highlighting both the instability and mobile nature of this genomic region. Although many such events have often occurred during the evolution of various CoVs, the genomic architecture of the relatively young SARS-CoV/SARS-CoV-2 lineage so far appears to be stable.

Keywords: bioinformatics; coronavirus; genome evolution; horizontal gene transfer; molecular evolution; recombination.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

👁 Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Matrices of incongruence among the core genomic regions of the four CoV genera (AD) based on the normalized RF method, for unrooted trees (calculated with the TreeCMP server). BioNJ phylogenetic trees were generated with the Poisson model of evolution and 500 bootstrap replicates. In addition, branch lengths <0.02 were collapsed. The orange line above each matrix displays the average Poisson distance among sequences of the same genomic region (calculated with the MegaX software). Blue bars above each matrix display the average RF value for that particular region (against all other regions).
👁 Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
The genomic organization of the core ORFs and peptides of the SARS-CoV-2 genome are displayed on the top of the figure. The table/matrix below it shows which genomic regions of the various subgenera are involved in intertypic recombination events. “GM” represents events that occurred at the common ancestor of the genus. “SgM” represents events that occurred at the common ancestor of the subgenus. “P” represents more recent events that occurred for one or few members of the subgenus and have resulted in a polyphyletic tree pattern (for that region and subgenus). All incongruence events in the matrix are supported by the three phylogenetic tree methods (NJ, PhyML, and Bayesian) and are also statistically significant, based on the AU test of CONSEL. Two phylogenetic trees (of ORF1ab and Spike) for all four genera are also included below the matrix, to visualize the recombination events of the Spike region. In these trees, we use stars to denote subgenera that have been involved in intertypic homologous recombination events, in any genomic region (not only the Spike).
👁 Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Presence and distribution of AOFs in the α- and β-CoVs. Each column in the matrix represents a certain AOF. Red color (within the matrix cells) denotes the (TblastN) presence of an AOF that is also verified by a predicted ORF with length ≥30 aa, whereas if the length of the predicted ORF is <30 aa, then it is denoted with orange color. Stars denote AOFs that are present in both α- and β-CoV members, whereas diamonds denote an AOF that resulted from duplication of a core ORF. Downward arrows denote AOFs that have homologs in non-CoV genomes, together with their best PSI-BLAST hit e-value. Horizontal orange bars (above the matrices) denote the genomic region where the AOF is located, that is, S-E denotes the region between the Spike and Envelope ORFs.
👁 Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Presence and distribution of AOFs in the γ- and δ-CoVs. Each column in the matrix represents a certain AOF. Red color (within the matrix cells) denotes the (TblastN) presence of AOFs that is also verified by a predicted ORF with length ≥30 aa, whereas if the length of the predicted ORF is <30 aa, then it is denoted with orange color. Inverted triangles denote AOFs that are present in both γ- and δ-CoV members. Downward arrows denote AOFs that have homologs in non-CoV genomes, together with their best PSI-BLAST hit e-value. Horizontal orange bars (above the matrices) denote the genomic region where the AOF is located, that is, M-N denotes the region between the Membrane and Nucleocapsid ORFs.

References

    1. Banerjee A, Doxey AC, Tremblay BJ-M, Mansfield MJ, Subudhi S, Hirota JA, Miller MS, McArthur AG, Mubareka S, Mossman K.. 2020. Predicting the recombination potential of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus. J Gen Virol. 101(12):1251–1260. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bankevich A, Nurk S, Antipov D, Gurevich AA, Dvorkin M, Kulikov AS, Lesin VM, Nikolenko SI, Pham S, Prjibelski AD, et al. 2012. SPAdes: a new genome assembly algorithm and its applications to single-cell sequencing. J Comput Biol. 19(5):455–477. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bedford J, Farrar J, Ihekweazu C, Kang G, Koopmans M, Nkengasong J.. 2019. A new twenty-first century science for effective epidemic response. Nature 575(7781):130–136. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Benson DA, Cavanaugh M, Clark K, Karsch-Mizrachi I, Lipman DJ, Ostell J, Sayers EW.. 2013. GenBank. Nucleic Acids Res. 41(Database issue):D36–D42. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bermingham A, Chand MA, Brown CS, Aarons E, Tong C, Langrish C, Hoschler K, Brown K, Galiano M, Myers R, et al. 2012. Severe respiratory illness caused by a novel coronavirus, in a patient transferred to the United Kingdom from the Middle East. Euro Surveill. 17(20290):2012. - PubMed
Cite

NCBI Literature Resources

MeSH PMC Bookshelf Disclaimer

The PubMed wordmark and PubMed logo are registered trademarks of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Unauthorized use of these marks is strictly prohibited.