Index Entries

Furin Cleavage Site Is Key to SARS-CoV-2 Pathogenesis

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.26.268854v1 

Bryan A. Johnson, Xuping Xie,Birte Kalveram, Kumari G. Lokugamage, Antonio Muruato, jing Zou, Xianwen Zhang, Terry Juelich, Jennifer K. Smith, lihong Zhang, Nathen Bopp, Craig Schindewolf, Michelle Vu, Abigail Vanderheiden, Danielle Swetnam, Jessica A. Plante, Patricia Aguilar, Kenneth S. Plante, Benhur Lee, Scott C. Weaver, Mehul S. Sutharsan, Andrew l. Routh, Ping Ren, Zhiqiang Ku, Zhiqiang An, kari Debbink, Pei Yong Shi, Alexander N. Freiberg, and Vineet D. Menachery
August 26, 2020
University of Texas Medical Branch

Article summary: "A deletion of the furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 amplifies replication in Vero cells, but attenuates replication in respiratory cells and pathogenesis in vivo. Loss of the furin site also reduces susceptibility to neutralization in vitro."

"Importance: By removing the furin cleavage site, we demonstrate the importance of this insertion to SARS-CoV-2 replication and pathogenesis. In addition, the findings with Vero cells indicate the likelihood of cell culture adaptations in virus stocks that can influence reagent generation and interpretation of a wide range of data including neutralization and drug efficacy. Overall, our work highlights the importance of this key motif in SARS-CoV-2 infection and pathogenesis." 

See also 

Loss of furin cleavage site attenuates SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
 
 
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COVID-19,SARS-CoV-2 spike protein