Scientists are calling for a universal vaccine after a Chinese study warned COVID could combine with the super-lethal MERS virus.
, is highly lethal but not very contagious. Now imagine a blend of the two—a respiratory virus with the most dangerous qualities of both. Contagiousa new, more widely-effective vaccineDifferent viruses from the closely related families can combine through a process called “recombination” and produce hybrids called “recombinants.” This recombination requires the viruses to share an infection mechanism.
The recombination risk is one driver of a global effort to develop new vaccines that could prevent, or reduce the severity of, infection by a variety of SARS viruses, MERS and any hybrid of them. A universal vaccine for a whole family of viruses. A team led by Qiao Wang, a virologist at the Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, part of Fudan University in Shanghai, highlighted the SARS-MERS recombination risk inSARS-CoV-2 tends to favor a receptor called ACE2, while MERS-CoV tends to favor the DPP4 receptor, Wang and their coauthors explained. Our cells tend to have one or the other, not both.
This hypothetical coinfection—SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV mixing and mutating in the same cells—“may result in the emergence of recombined [betacoronavirus],” Wang and their coauthors wrote. Call it “SARS-CoV-3” or “MERS-CoV-2.”
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