Formation of the coronavirus replication-transcription complex involves the synthesis of large polyprotein precursors that are extensively processed by virus-encoded cysteine proteases. In this study, the coding sequence of the feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) main protease, 3CL(pro), was determined. Comparative sequence analyses revealed that FIPV 3CL(pro) and other coronavirus main ...

In November 2002, an outbreak of a life-threatening ‘atypical pneumonia’ for which no etiological agent could be identified occurred in Guangdong Province, China. In March 2003, a similar outbreak was reported in Hong Kong [1]. Cases of similar respiratory illness were subsequently reported globally including China, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and USA. This syndrome is a new clinical ent...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was first described during a 2002-2003 global outbreak of severe pneumonia associated with human deaths and person-to-person disease transmission. The etiologic agent was initially identified as a coronavirus by thin-section electron microscopic examination of a virus isolate. Virions were spherical, 78 nm in mean diameter, and composed of a helical nucl...

http://www.revistadechimie.ro 1055 Feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) is viral, lethal disease caused by a feline coronavirus, with immune-mediated mechanism. The disease has been reported in a variety of species, mountain lion (Felis concolor), caracal (Caracal caracal), lion (Panthera Leo), tiger (Panthera tigris), jaguar (Panthera onca), sand cat (Margarita felis), shaving ( Lynx lynx) and ...

The coronavirus assembly process encloses a ribonucleoprotein genome into vesicles containing the lipid-embedded proteins S (spike), E (envelope), and M (membrane). This process depends on interactions with membranes that may involve palmitoylation, a common posttranslational lipidation of cysteine residues. To determine whether specific palmitoylations influence coronavirus assembly, we introd...

The 3D jury system has predicted the methyltransferase fold for the nsp13 protein of the SARS coronavirus. Based on the conservation of a characteristic tetrad of residues, the mRNA cap-1 methyltransferase function has been assigned to this protein, which has potential implications for antiviral therapy.

Coronavirus is a common cause of upper respiratory tract infection in children and has also been occasionally associated with lower respiratory tract infections. Use of reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction has aided in the rapid and reliable detection of these viruses, and thus has led to identification of these viruses as etiology of respiratory disease in more cases. We here presen...

Coronaviruses are important pathogens that cause acute respiratory diseases in humans. Replication of the approximately 30-kb positive-strand RNA genome of coronaviruses and discontinuous synthesis of an extensive set of subgenome-length RNAs (transcription) are mediated by the replicase-transcriptase, a barely characterized protein complex that comprises several cellular proteins and up to 16 ...

The severe acute respiratory syndrome-associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) 3C-like protease (3CL(pro) or M(pro)) is an attractive target for the development of anti-SARS drugs because of its crucial role in the viral life cycle. In this study, a compound database was screened by the structure-based virtual screening approach to identify initial hits as inhibitors of SARS-CoV 3CL(pro). Out of the 5...