Review Article Genotype and phenotype of COVID-19: Their roles in pathogenesis

COVID-19 isa novel coronavirus with an outbreak of unusual viral pneumonia in Wuhan, China, and then pandemic. Based on its phylogenetic relationships and genomic structures the COVID-19 belongs to genera Betacoronavirus. Human Betacoronaviruses (SARS-CoV2, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV) have many similarities, but also have differences in their genomic and phenotypic structure that can influence their pathogenesis. COVID-19 is containing singlestranded (positive-sense) RNA associated with a nucleoprotein within a capsid comprised of matrix protein. A typical CoV contains at least six ORFs in its genome. All the structural and accessory proteins are translated from the sgRNAs of CoVs. Four main structural proteins are encoded by ORFs 10, 11 on the one-third of the genome near the 30-terminus. The genetic and phenotypic structure of COVID-19 in pathogenesis is important. This article highlights the most important of these features compared to other Betacoronaviruses. Copyright ? 2020, Taiwan Society of Microbiology. Published by Elsevier Taiwan LLC. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by

Automated summary

COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus belonging to the Betacoronavirus genus, with similarities and differences in genomic structure compared to other human Betacoronaviruses. It contains at least six open reading frames and important structural proteins are encoded near the one-third of the genome.