Bioinformatical study on the proteomics and evolution of SARS-CoV.

A novel coronavirus has been identified as the causative agent of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). For all the SARS-CoV associated proteins derivated from the SARS-CoV genome, the physiochemical properties such as the molecular weight, isoelectric point and extinction coefficient of each protein were calculated. The transmembrane segments and subcellular localization (SubLocation) prediction and conserved protein motifs search against database were employed to analyze the function of SARS-CoV proteins. Also, the homology protein sequence alignment and evolutionary distance matrix calculation between SARS-CoV associated proteins and the corresponding proteins of other coronaviruses were employed to identify the classification and phylogenetic relationship between SARS-CoV and other coronaviruses. The results showed that SARS-CoV is a novel coronavirus which is different from any of the three previously known groups of coronviruses, but it is closer to Bo-CoV and MHV than to other coronaviruses. This study is in aid of experimental determination of SARS-CoV proteomics and the development of antiviral vaccine. © Science in China Press 2003.