引起人非典型性肺炎的冠状病毒基因组与其它冠状病毒基因组的初步比较

一种在世界范围内突然爆发的致命流行病——急性呼吸窘迫综合症(SARS)击倒了数干人，一种全新的冠状病毒被认为是其病原．5个SARS相关冠状病毒的全基因组序列已经完成．我们进行了SARS相关冠状病毒和其它冠状病毒的基因组进化分析和序列比较，结果显示：1．SARS相关冠状病毒不直接来自于任何已知的冠状病毒；2．E蛋白的基因可能是在近期从其它病毒横向转移到SARS病毒中来的；3．Sl和S2基因发生了较大范围的缺失或插入突变．这些基因横向转移和突变改变了SARS相关病毒的表面结构和抗原性，极有可能是导致其获得侵染人类细胞的主要原因．

COMPARISON OF THE GENOME SEQUENCE OF SARS-ASSOCIATED CORONAVIRUS WITH THOSE OF OTHER CORONAVIRUS

Thousands of people have been sickened by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is a fatal disease suddenly appeared around the world. A novel coronavirus was discovered in association with cases of SARS. The sequence of the complete genomes of five SARS-associated coronavirus were determined. We compared the genomes of SARS-associated coronavirus with those of all other coronavirus which genomes have been sequenced, and found that: 1.none of the SARS-associated coronavirus gene was colsely reated to those of other coronavirus; 2. the SARS-associated coronavirus gene obtained the E gene recently by lateral gene transfer; 3. large deletious and insertion have taken place in S1 and S2 genes in the SARS-associated coronavirus gene. SARS-associated coronavirus gene may have obtained the ability to infect human cells due to those gene transfer and major mutations.