Products & Information Collection of New variant SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) -UK B.1.1.7 lineage

GeneMedi pseudotype virus (pseudovirus) of SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) B.1.1.7 lineage

SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) B.1.1.7 lineage of Spike protein & ACE2 competition binding assay for efficacy evaluation of COVID-19 vaccines and therapeutic antibodies

GeneMedi codon-optimized spike mammalian expression vector for SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) B.1.1.7 lineage

Spike mutant variant of SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) B.1.1.7 lineage spreaded in UK

The world is in midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recently a novel SARS-COV-2 (2019nCOV) lineage, the B.1.1.7 lineage, with serials of site mutation, shows stronger infection ability in the UK. The SARS-COV-2 B.1.1.7 lineage carries a larger than a usual number of coronavirus genetic changes.

The Spike protein (S-protein) of SARS-CoV-2 (2019nCoV) mediates receptor (ACE2) binding and cell entry and is the dominant target of the immune system.

In SARS-COV-2 B.1.1.7 lineage, most mutations and deletions occur in the coronavirus spike protein. These include spike position 501, one of the key contact residues in the receptor-binding domain (RBD), and experimental data suggest mutation N501Y can increase ACE2 receptor affinity (Starr et al. 2020) and P681H, one of 4 residues comprising the insertion that creates a furin cleavage site between S1 and S2 in spike. The S1/S2 furin cleavage site of SARS-CoV-2 is not found in closely related coronaviruses and has been shown to promote entry into respiratory epithelial cells and transmission in animal models (Hoffmann, Kleine-Weber, and Pöhlmann 2020; Peacock et al. 2020; Zhu et al. 2020). N501Y has been associated with increased infectivity and virulence in a mouse model (Gu et al. 2020). Both N501Y and P681H have been observed independently but not to our knowledge in combination before now.

Also present is the deletion of two amino acids at sites 69-70 in spike - this mutation is one of a number of recurrent deletions observed in the N terminal domain of Spike (McCarthy et al. 2020; Kemp et al. 2020) and has been seen in multiple lineages linked to several RBD mutations. For example, it arose in the mink-associated outbreak in Denmark on the background of the Y453F RBD mutation, and in humans in association with the N439K RBD mutation, accounting for its relatively high frequency in the global genome data (~3000 sequences).

Reference:
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4 Young, Barnaby E. et al. 2020. “Effects of a Major Deletion in the SARS-CoV-2 Genome on the Severity of Infection and the Inflammatory Response: An Observational Cohort Study.” 2020. The Lancet 396 (10251): 603–11.

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6 Gu, Hongjing, Qi Chen, Guan Yang, Lei He, Hang Fan, Yong-Qiang Deng, Yanxiao Wang, et al. 2020. “Adaptation of SARS-CoV-2 in BALB/c Mice for Testing Vaccine Efficacy.” Science 369 (6511): 1603–7.

7 Hoffmann, Markus, Hannah Kleine-Weber, and Stefan Pöhlmann. 2020. “A Multibasic Cleavage Site in the Spike Protein of SARS-CoV-2 Is Essential for Infection of Human Lung Cells.” Molecular Cell 78 (4): 779–84.e5.

8 Kemp, S. A., D. A. Collier, R. Datir, S. Gayed, A. Jahun, M. Hosmillo, Iatm Ferreira, et al. 2020. “Neutralising Antibodies Drive Spike Mediated SARS-CoV-2 Evasion.” Infectious Diseases (except HIV/AIDS). medRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.12.05.20241927 204

9 McCarthy, Kevin R., Linda J. Rennick, Sham Nambulli, Lindsey R. Robinson-McCarthy, William G. Bain, Ghady Haidar, and W. Paul Duprex. 2020. “Natural Deletions in the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein Drive Antibody Escape.” Microbiology. bioRxiv.

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