Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses

Yiran Wu; Suwen Zhao

doi:10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115

Furin cleavage sites naturally occur in coronaviruses

Stem Cell Res. 2020 Dec 9:50:102115. doi: 10.1016/j.scr.2020.102115. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yiran Wu¹, Suwen Zhao²

Affiliations

¹ iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China. Electronic address: wuyr@shanghaitech.edu.cn.
² iHuman Institute, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China; School of Life Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai 201210, China. Electronic address: zhaosw@shanghaitech.edu.cn.

Abstract

The spike protein is a focused target of COVID-19, a pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. A 12-nt insertion at S1/S2 in the spike coding sequence yields a furin cleavage site, which raised controversy views on origin of the virus. Here we analyzed the phylogenetic relationships of coronavirus spike proteins and mapped furin recognition motif on the tree. Furin cleavage sites occurred independently for multiple times in the evolution of the coronavirus family, supporting the natural occurring hypothesis of SARS-CoV-2.