Targeted research:

http://chinaxiv.org/abs/202002.00004

Abstracts Abstract: In December 2019, Wuhan, China, reported pneumonia caused by 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Based on genomic information, our previous research results show that although 2019-nCoV and SARS coronavirus belong to the Beta coronavirus B subgroup (BB coronavirus), the two viruses are very different. This result is consistent with the difference in clinical symptoms between the two. Earlier research also found that BB coronavirus has a large number of variable translations, and revealed the characteristics of rapid mutation and high diversity of BB coronavirus from the molecular level. This study is the first international report of an important mutation in the S protein of BB coronavirus. This mutation allows 2019-nCoV to have a site for Furin protease cleavage. It is all other BB coronaviruses except murine hepatitis coronavirus ( Including SARS and SARS-like (SARS-like) coronavirus) does not have. This mutation may increase the efficiency of 2019-nCoV infecting cells, which in turn makes it significantly greater than SARS coronavirus. Due to this mutation, the packaging mechanism of the 2019 coronavirus will also be different from most other Beta coronaviruses such as SARS, and may be the same as the packaging mechanism of murine hepatitis coronavirus, HIV, Ebola virus and some avian influenza viruses. As an unexpected discovery, some avian influenza viruses can also obtain Furin protease cleavage sites through mutations. The follow-up study of this important mutation will reveal the reason for the strong transmission of 2019-nCoV and lay the foundation for the development of drugs, antibodies and vaccines.

I found this excerpt from the now-deleted preprint:

The evolution of 2019-nCoV remains elusive. We found 4 insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. Importantly, amino acid residues in all the 4 inserts have identity or similarity to those in the HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. Interestingly, despite the inserts being discontinuous on the primary amino acid sequence, 3D-modelling of the 2019-nCoV suggests that they converge to constitute the receptor binding site. The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be fortuitous in nature. This work provides yet unknown insights on 2019-nCoV and sheds light on the evolution and pathogenicity of this virus with important implications for diagnosis of this virus.