NanoViricides Inc. (NNVC)

[KMBJN]

Wow, something of a bombshell here in this pre-print study of 2019n-CoV genome: the S spike on the new virus (which is typically the protein used to enter a cell) is nothing like other coronaviruses. Instead it seems to have "inserts" from HIV-1 gene segments encoding gp120 and Gag. This brings up the whole idea that it was artificially created, i.e. a bioweapon that was accidentally released. We'll see if anyone else confirms this troubling conclusion:

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.30.927871v1

So, despite the previous paper seeing more similarity to SARS (with ACE2 cellular entry receptor) versus MERS (with DPP-IV receptor), this new virus appears to be some wacky combination of HIV (which uses CCR5 and CXCR4 to enter cells) with previous CoV like SARS.

NNVC / Diwan seems to have his work cut out for him to model a ligand based on this modified S spike protein.

"Since the S protein of 2019-nCoV shares closest ancestry with SARS GZ02, the sequence coding for spike proteins of these two viruses were compared using MultiAlin software. We found four new insertions in the protein of 2019-nCoV- “GTNGTKR” (IS1), “HKNNKS” (IS2), “GDSSSG” (IS3) and “QTNSPRRA” (IS4) (Figure 2). To our surprise, these sequence insertions were not only absent in S protein of SARS but were also not observed in any other member of the Coronaviridae family (Supplementary figure). This is startling as it is quite unlikely for a virus to have acquired such unique insertions naturally in a short duration of time. "

"Further analysis revealed that aligned sequences of HIV-1 with 2019-nCoV were derived from surface glycoprotein gp120 (amino acid sequence positions: 404-409, 462-467, 136-150) and from Gag protein (366-384 amino acid) (Table 1). Gag protein of HIV is involved in host membrane binding, packaging of the virus and for the formation of virus-like particles. Gp120 plays crucial role in recognizing the host cell by binding to the primary receptor CD4.This binding induces structural rearrangements in GP120, creating a high affinity binding site for a chemokine co-receptor like CXCR4 and/or CCR5."

Maybe it's time to break out the HIV-cide instead of the previous MERS-cide. Wonder if Lulu and Nana are resistant to this mutant combo HIV-CoV.

Very interesting.