Thread by @ZhouLabUCR

Researchers have identified microscopic features including a unique furin cleavage site that could make the pathogen more infectious than the SARS virus @DrEricDing nature.com/articles/d4158…

More information on the furin mutation:

https://twitter.com/ZhouLabUCR/status/1237414305915535360?s=19

There is "an unexpected furin cleavage site at the S1/S2 boundary of SARS-CoV-2 S, which is cleaved during biosynthesis-a novel feature setting this virus apart from SARS-CoV and SARSr-CoVs." - Cell (2020) 10.1016/j.cell.2020.02.058 @DrEricDing

This furin site of #SARSCoV2 is located where a trypsin cleavage site is supposed to located. There are two trypsin cleavage sites. #SARSCoV2 somehow acquired furin mutation at the first trypsin cleavage site (R685) while maintaining the other one (R815). @DrEricDing

A "new" Nature paper about pangolins has generated a lot of interest (nature.com/articles/s4158…). This study and several others have been discussed back in February: Pangolin is unlikely to be the source or intermediate host of #SARSCoV2.
nature.com/articles/d4158…

Pangolin coronavirues only share between 85.5% and 92.4% of their DNA with #SARSCoV2 and don't have the furin-like cleavage site - "the new hanging chad" of #SARSCoV2.

https://twitter.com/ZhouLabUCR/status/1243281446816473088

For those who are interested in this topic, I strongly recommend this nice @CellCellPress paper (cell.com/cell/fulltext/…) by Prof. Zhang who first shared the genome sequence of #SARSCoV2 with the world.

https://twitter.com/ZhouLabUCR/status/1243267697976041474