Several new viral respiratory tract infectious diseases with epidemic potential that threaten global health security have emerged in the past 15 years. In 2003, WHO issued a worldwide alert for an unknown emerging illness, later named severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The disease caused by a novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV) rapidly spread worldwide, causing more than 8000 cases and 800 deat...

Receptor recognition is a major determinant of the host range, cross-species infections, and pathogenesis of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). A defined receptor-binding domain (RBD) in the SARS-CoV spike protein specifically recognizes its host receptor, angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2). This article reviews the latest knowledge about how RBDs from different S...

A new human coronavirus responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was identified in 2003, which raised concern about coronaviruses as agents of serious infectious disease. Nevertheless, coronaviruses have been known for about 50 years to be major agents of respiratory, enteric, or systemic infections of domestic and companion animals. Feline and canine coronaviruses are widesprea...

Viruses that infect the lung are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in animals and humans worldwide. Coronaviruses are being associated increasingly with severe diseases in the lower respiratory tract. Alveolar epithelial cells are an important target for coronavirus infection in the lung, and infected cells can initiate innate immune responses to viral infection. In this overview, ...

T he Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was first recognized as a new febrile respiratory illness in Saudi Arabia in June 2012. As of September 21, 2015, the WHO reported 1569 laboratory-confirmed cases, including at least 554 related deaths. Cases have been reported in 26 countries ; however, the majority of cases have occurred in Saudi Arabia (79%) and South Korea (13%) (...

Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, or MERS-CoV, is a novel coronavirus known to cause severe acute respiratory illness in humans; about 40 percent of confirmed cases have been fatal. Human-to-human transmission and multiple outbreaks of respiratory illness have been attributed to MERS-CoV, and severe respiratory illness caused by this virus continues to be identified. MERS-CoV was fi...

System dynamics approach offers great potential for addressing how intervention policies can affect the spread of emerging infectious diseases in complex and highly networked systems. Here, we develop a model that explains the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) epidemic that occurred in Hong Kong in 2003. The dynamic model developed with system dynamics methodology include...

Members of the family Coronaviridae have the largest genomes of all RNA viruses, typically in the region of 30 kilobases. Several coronaviruses, such as Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus (MERS-CoV), are of medical importance, with high mortality rates and, in the case of SARS-CoV, significant pandemic potent...

To understand how Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) transmitted from bats to humans, we compared the virus surface spikes of MERS-CoV and a related bat coronavirus, HKU4. Although HKU4 spike cannot mediate viral entry into human cells, two mutations enabled it to do so by allowing it to be activated by human proteases. These mutations are present in MERS-CoV spike, explain...

We sequenced the 29,751-base genome of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-associated coronavirus known as the Tor2 isolate. The genome sequence reveals that this coronavirus is only moderately related to other known coronaviruses, including two human coronaviruses, HCoV-OC43 and HCoV-229E. Phylogenetic analysis of the predicted viral proteins indicates that the virus does not closely ...