The SARS-CoV-2 and its Similarity to Other Bat-Derived SARS-like Coronaviruses: A Data-Driven Study

In this paper, a data-driven comparison of the novel coronavirus strain (the SARS-CoV-2) with two bat-derived SARS-like coronaviruses, bat-SL-CoVZC45 and bat-SL-CoVZXC21 is presented. Biological research has shown that the SARS-CoV-2 shows sequence identity most similar to these two bat-derived viruses. Through comparison of guanine-cytosine content and oligonucleotide composition, variations in their genomes were observed. These genomes were then translated into proteins and their amino acid concentrations were compared. Finally, various properties of the 4 important structural proteins (envelope, membrane, spike and nucleocapsid proteins) such as aromaticity, isoelectric point, instability index and amino acid count were compared for the three coronaviruses. Not only does this paper present useful insights on the new virus strain, but also on the properties that distinguish it from other similar coronaviruses.