New Paper: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

[cbrueffer]

Title: The proximal origin of SARS-CoV-2

Please paste a link to the paper or a citation here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

What is the paper's DOI?

10.1038/s41591-020-0820-9

Is this paper primarily relevant to Background, Diagnostics, or Therapeutics? (OK if more than one)

Background

Please list some keywords (3-10) that help identify the relevance of this paper to COVID-19

origin, evolution, genomic features

Suggested questions to answer about each paper:

• What did they analyze?

The authors describe the genomic features of SARS-CoV-2, in particular the receptor binding domain and the polybasic cleavage site. They relate these to other known coronaviruses such as SARS-CoV, and using these comparisons provide evidence for and against several putative origins of SARS-CoV-2.

• What methods did they use?

Comparative genomics

• Does this paper study COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, or a related disease and/or virus?

SARS-CoV-2 in relation to other coronaviruses

• What is the main finding (or a few main takeaways)?

It's highly likely that SARS-CoV-2 evolved naturally.

• What does this paper tell us about the background and/or diagnostics/therapeutics for COVID-19 / SARS-CoV-2?

SARS-CoV-2 is unlikely to have a laboratory origin (either designed, genetically altered, or escaped). Instead it's highly likely to have evolved naturally in an animal host, however current evidence cannot discriminate an origin of the current form before or after zoonotic transfer to humans. It's genomic features highly resemble known coronaviruses present in bats (overall sequence similarity) and pangolins (receptor binding site).

• Do you have any concerns about methodology or the interpretation of these results beyond this analysis?

No

Any comments or notes?

[rando2]

Thanks for putting all of this together and linking your PR with the paper, @cbrueffer ! This was hugely helpful on the project administration side!