Historical Insight, Classification, and Common Features of Coronavirus Family

Historical Insight, Classification, and Common Features of Coronavirus Family

Moulay Abdelmonaim El Hidan, Soraia El Baz, Mohamed Merzouki, Kholoud Kahime, Moulay Abdeljalil Ait Baamrane, Mohammed Rhazi, Ahmed Draoui, Mustapha Agnaou, Mohamed Ait Hamza, Aissam El Finti, Abdelaziz Zahidi, Abdelhamid El Mousadik
Copyright: © 2022 |Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8202-2.ch001
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Abstract

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that usually cause mild to moderate upper-respiratory tract illnesses, like the common cold. They were named according to the shape of glycoprotein spikes present on the viral surface and resembling to the solar corona. The first coronaviruses identified in human were HCoV 229E and the HCoV OC43, known also as β-coronavirus. This virus family has become increasingly important and received more attention within scientific community in the past two decades because of three new viruses that can cause serious, even fatal, disease. These are SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV), which emerged in November 2002 and caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS); Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) caused by the MERS coronavirus (MERS-CoV), identified in September 2012 and continues to cause sporadic and localized outbreaks. The third novel coronavirus to emerge in this century is called SARS-CoV-2. This chapter will describe the history of the coronavirus family discovery, emergence, and classification of the main coronaviruses.
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Introduction

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak has led the world scientific community, to quickly increase the understanding of epidemiology and pathogenesis of the disease. However, the first virus of this family was identified during the 1960s by using electron microscopy to visualize the typical spike glycoprotein projections on the surface of enveloped virus particles (Awadasseid et al., 2020). Subsequently, coronaviruses family was identified as responsible of several common infections, and that they are behind seasonal or local epidemics of respiratory and gastrointestinal disease in numerous animals (Abd El-Aziz and Stockand, 2020). coronaviruses family had been named according to the species from which they were identified and the disease related with the viral infection. Bovine coronavirus (BCoV) induces respiratory and gastrointestinal disease in cattle (Decaro et al., 2008; Amer et al., 2013). Feline infectious peritonitis virus (FIPV) and canine coronavirus (CCoV) may induce severe disease in cats and dogs (Le Poder, 2011). Porcine transmissible gastroenteritis virus (TGEV) and porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDV) induce gastroenteritis in pigs (Meng et al., 2013). Avian infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) infects chickens, inducing respiratory infection, reduced egg production, and mortality in young birds (Cavanagh, 2007). In 1967, the first human coronavirus was isolated from human nasal epithelium and trachea by June Almeida and David Tyrrell. It is HCoV 229E and B814 strains, that share significant identities with the IBV (Almeida & Tyrrell, 1967). Human coronaviruses (HCoVs) 229e and OC43 are identified worldwide and are expected to be responsible for 5–30% of common colds and mild gastroenteritis (Fung and Liu, 2019). To date, the most infamous example of zoonotic transmission of a CoV are the outbreak of SARS in 2002 and the pandemic of SARS-CoV-2 in 2019. The last one shares several common features with known coronaviruses (Cascella et al, 2020), especially its zoonotic origin, infection route, and genetic organization. Epidemiological, clinical, and pathophysiological findings reveal specific characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 that make it the most virulent and contagious coronavirus of the family (Wrapp et al., 2020).

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