Evolutionary Signatures Governing the Codon Usage Bias in Coronaviruses and Their Implications for Viruses Infecting Various Bat Species.

ABSTRACT: Many viruses that cause serious diseases in humans and animals, including the betacoronaviruses (beta-CoVs), such as SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and the recently identified SARS-CoV-2, have natural reservoirs in bats. Because these viruses rely entirely on the host cellular machinery for survival, their evolution is likely to be guided by the link between the codon usage of the virus and that of its host. As a result, specific cellular microenvironments of the diverse hosts and/or host tissues imprint peculiar molecular signatures in virus genomes. Our study is aimed at deciphering some of these signatures. Using a variety of genetic methods we demonstrated that trends in codon usage across chiroptera-hosted CoVs are collaboratively driven by geographically different host-species and temporal-spat

SUBMITTER: Kumar N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8473330 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature