An abstract of the research paper submitted to the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Universiti Malaysia Kelantan, in partial fulfilment of the course DVT55204 – Research Project.
Covid-19 is a recently emerging form of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) caused by SARS-Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) which was first reported in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Bats are natural reservoirs for coronaviruses, and bat coronaviruses have been highlighted as some strains of SARS-like coronavirus (SARSL-CoV-2) carried by bats are almost identical to human SARS-CoV-2 at the genome level, especially the spike protein. Some strains of these bat coronaviruses are highly similar to human SARS-CoV-2 and are able to use the same receptor as SARS-CoV-2 to mediate cell entry. Early last year, five SARS-CoV-2-like viruses were isolated from bats in East Coast Malaysia (four from Sekayu, Terengganu and one from Gunung Reng, Kelantan). Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) has been identified as the important receptor of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 to enter human cells. The interaction between the S1 protein of the virus, particularly amino acid fragment 318-510, with the human ACE-2 receptor is the critical determinant of coronavirus host range and cross-species transmission. This study aimed to investigate the presence of key amino acid residues for human ACE-2 on the RBD of the spike protein of these bat coronaviruses. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), and sequencing of the PCR products were used to investigate the presence of the ACE-2 RBD. From the results obtained in this experiment, it was determined that coronaviruses isolated from bats in East Coast Malaysia can utilise human ACE-2 receptors to infect human cells and thus may become a public health concern in the future.
Keywords: SARS-CoV-2-like coronaviruses, ACE-2 receptors, Receptor Binding Domain (RBD), bat coronaviruses, human transmission