Expression And Immunogenicity Analysis Of The Receptor-binding Domain Of SARS-CoV Spike Protein

Objective: The severe acute respiratory syndrome(SARS), also named infectious atypical pneumonia, is a newly described and highly contagious respiratory infection that first occurred in late 2002 in Guangdong province, China, and spread to more than 30 contries such as Canada, Singapore, Vietnam and so on in early 2003. It has been identified that the etiological agent of SARS is a novel coronavirus, named as SARS-CoV.Virus envelope glycoproteins initiate entry of enveloped virus into cells by binding to cell surface receptors followed by conformational changes leading to membrane fusion and delivery of the genome in the cytoplasm. The envelope glycoproteins, spike(S) glycoproteins, of coronaviruses are no exception and mediate binding to host cells followed by membrane fusion; They form the characteristic corona of large, distinctive spikes in the viral envelopes. Such 20-to-40-nm complex surface projections also surround the periphery of the SARS-CoV particles. The level of overall sequence similarity between the predicted amino acid sequence of the SARS-CoV S glycoprotein and the S glycoprotein of other coronavirus is low(20-27% amino acid identity). The S protein is major targets for neutralizing...