Variations in Spike Glycoprotein Gene of MERS-CoV, South Korea, 2015

Abstract

An outbreak of nosocomial infections with Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus occurred in South Korea in May 2015. Spike glycoprotein genes of virus strains from South Korea were closely related to those of strains from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. However, virus strains from South Korea showed strain-specific variations.

Keywords: MERS-CoV; Middle East respiratory syndrome; Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus; South Korea; genetic evolution; outbreak; recombination; spike glycoprotein gene; viruses.

Figure 1

History of confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus infection, South Korea, May 2015. Eight confirmed cases of human infection with this virus are shown according to date of onset of illness. The unidentified case-patient was a patient for whom the transmission source was not identified. Red circles in time line indicate hospitalization period for the index case-patient. Black, blue, and purple circles in time line indicate recorded symptom onset date for each patient. Numbers within human symbols are patient numbers.

Figure 2

Molecular phylogenetic tree and coding region variants for spike glycoprotein genes of Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) isolates from South Korea, May 2015, and reference MERS-CoV sequences. Phylogenetic analysis of 139 spike glycoprotein gene sequences was performed by using RAxML software (10). Tree was visualized with FigTree v.1.4 (http://tree.bio.ed.ac.uk/software/figtree). Taxonomic positions of circulating strains from the outbreak in South Korea and Riyadh are indicated. Compressed major clades of MERS-CoV are indicated in bold. Bootstrap values (>70%) on nodes are shown as percentages on the basis of 1,000 replicates. Scale bar indicates nucleotide substitutions per site.