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Review
. 2021 Feb;23(2):e3303.
doi: 10.1002/jgm.3303. Epub 2021 Jan 6.

COVID-19: Virology, biology and novel laboratory diagnosis

Malihe Mohamadian  1   2 , Hossein Chiti  3 , Alireza Shoghli  4 , Sajjad Biglari  5 , Negin Parsamanesh  3 , Abdolreza Esmaeilzadeh  6   7
Affiliations
Review

COVID-19: Virology, biology and novel laboratory diagnosis

Malihe Mohamadian et al. J Gene Med. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

Background: At the end of December 2019, a novel coronavirus tentatively named SARS-CoV-2 in Wuhan, a central city in China, was announced by the World Health Organization. SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus that has become a major public health concern after the outbreak of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-CoV (SARS-CoV) in 2002 and 2012, respectively. As of 29 October 2020, the total number of COVID-19 cases had reached over 44 million worldwide, with more than 1.17 million confirmed deaths.

Discussion: SARS-CoV-2 infected patients usually present with severe viral pneumonia. Similar to SARS-CoV, the virus enters respiratory tract cells via the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptor 2. The structural proteins play an essential role in budding the virus particles released from different host cells. To date, an approved vaccine or treatment option of a preventive character to avoid severe courses of COVID-19 is still not available.

Conclusions: In the present study, we provide a brief review of the general biological features of CoVs and explain the pathogenesis, clinical symptoms and diagnostic approaches regarding monitoring future infectivity and prevent emerging COVID-19 infections.

Keywords: coronavirus; diagnostic methods; genome structure; pathogenesis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
The schematic genomic structure of coronavirus. (a) COVID‐19. (b) MERS‐CoV. (c) SARS‐CoV. The typical coronavirus genome is a single‐stranded, which is approximately 25–32 kb. It contains 5' caps and 3'‐UTR tails. (d) Coronavirusencoding structural proteins four structural genes, including spike, envelope, membrane and nucleocapsid genes, as well as accessory proteins (3a, 3b, 6, 7a, 7b, 8b, 9b and ORFs)
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Diagnostic protocol recommended for COVID‐19
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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MeSH terms

Supplementary concepts