MUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF MERS CoV VARIANTS, LESSONS TO PREVENT FUTURE PANDEMICS

Abstract

Initially, MERS-CoV was isolated in 2012 in Saudi Arabia, where it caused epidemics and major health emergencies, with mortality rates as high as 40%. However, due to the containment of the epidemic, mainly in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries, it did not take the shape of a pandemic, unlike the case of the recent SARS-Cov-2 outbreak. Protein-protein docking has confirmed that DPP4 is the host cell receptor where MERS-CoV binds with the help of its structural spike protein. In the present study, we have studied different MERS-CoV variants to compute the comparative assimilation of the mutational hotspots and their binding efficiencies with the human receptor. The M1099R and L449F Orf 1a/b spike protein variants were found to bind with the highest binding energy to the receptor DPP4 and these mutations were also reported in the most virulent variants reported till date. We have further identified the stretch of peptide residues that may serve as the putative mutation hotspot of MERS-CoV that may lead to future pandemics and the more conserved regions that may serve as potential vaccine candidates with greater global coverage.