NeoCoV? Kesako? A “new” coronavirus? In reality, “NeoCoV” – that is its name – has been the subject of studies for about ten years. It spreads among bats. What is new is a study published on the preprint site BioRxiv by a team of Chinese scientists, but not yet peer-reviewed.
A virus close to MERS
Researchers from Wuhan University and the Institute of Biophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have detected NeoCoV in bats present in South Africa. They focused on how this virus is able to enter our cells. NeoCoV is genetically close to another coronavirus, MERS-CoV (the Middle East Respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus), which appeared in 2012 in Saudi Arabia. NeoCoV shares at least 85% of the MERS-CoV genome, according to a article du Journal of Virology de 2014. However, this MERS-CoV has caused deadly epidemics in the Middle East.
Receiver Question
It is the question of the receiver that worries Chinese researchers. As Professor Cyril Cohen explains, immunologist and professor at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv, “they showed that unlike the MERS-CoV virus, which is really a close cousin, the entry receptor of NeoCoV is the ACE2.“ ACE2 is a key protein in infection by SARS-CoV-2, our current coronavirus, because it attaches to this cell surface receptor.
The Chinese team did not expect this cousin of MERS to have another entry route than him, continues Professor Cohen: “It surprised them. The fact that this virus is able to bind to ACE2 in bats is problematic, because they have shown that in a very weak way, there is a possibility that this virus can also infect human cells.“. They showed that with a single mutation, that made it much more infectious to human cells.
No panic but surveillance
It is still necessary that these bats be in contact with humans and that these mutations occur naturally. The Chinese publication is an alert. So there is nothing to panic about. Every year, tens of thousands of zoonotic infections (caused by a pathogen transmitted to humans from animals) occur due to coronaviruses, especially in Asia. This does not mean that they are then transmitted from human to human and trigger a pandemic.