As the infection of 2019-nCoV coronavirus is quickly developing into a global pneumonia epidemic, the careful analysis of its transmission and cellular mechanisms is sorely needed. In this Communication, we first analyzed two recent studies that concluded that snakes are the intermediate hosts of 2019-nCoV and that the 2019-nCoV spike protein insertions share a unique similarity to HIV-1. However, the reimplementation of the analyses, built on larger scale data sets using state-of-the-art bioinformatics methods and databases, presents clear evidence that rebuts these conclusions. Next, using metagenomic samples from Manis javanica, we assembled a draft genome of the 2019-nCoV-like coronavirus, which shows 73% coverage and 91% sequence identity to the 2019-nCoV genome. In particular, the alignments of the spike surface glycoprotein receptor binding domain revealed four times more variations in the bat coronavirus RaTG13 than in the Manis coronavirus compared with 2019-nCoV, suggesting the pangolin as a missing link in the transmission of 2019-nCoV from bats to human.

中文翻译：

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2019-nCoV 基因组的蛋白质结构和序列重新分析驳斥了蛇作为其中间宿主及其刺突蛋白插入与 HIV-1 之间的独特相似性。

随着2019-nCoV冠状病毒感染迅速发展成为全球性肺炎疫情，迫切需要对其传播和细胞机制进行仔细分析。在本通讯中，我们首先分析了两项最近的研究，得出的结论是蛇是 2019-nCoV 的中间宿主，并且 2019-nCoV 刺突蛋白插入与 HIV-1 具有独特的相似性。然而，使用最先进的生物信息学方法和数据库在更大规模的数据集上重新实施分析，提供了反驳这些结论的明确证据。接下来，我们使用来自爪哇山的宏基因组样本，组装了 2019-nCoV 样冠状病毒的基因组草图，该草图显示与 2019-nCoV 基因组的覆盖度为 73%，序列同一性为 91%。特别是，与 2019-nCoV 相比，刺突表面糖蛋白受体结合域的排列显示，蝙蝠冠状病毒 RaTG13 的变异是马尼斯冠状病毒的四倍，这表明穿山甲是蝙蝠传播 2019-nCoV 的缺失环节。对人类。