Ancestral origin, antigenic resemblance and epidemiological insights of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2): Global burden and Bangladesh perspective

SARS-CoV-2, a new coronavirus strain responsible for COVID-19 has emerged in Wuhan City, China and still continuing its worldwide pandemic nature. Considering the severity of the disease, a number of studies are underway, and full genomic sequences have already been released in the last few weeks to enable the understanding of the evolutionary origin and molecular characteristics of this virus. Bioinformatics analysis, satellite derived imaging data and epidemiological attributes were employed to investigate origin, immunogenic resemblance and global threat of newly pandemic SARS-CoV-2 including Bangladesh perspective. Based on currently available genomic information, a phylogeny study was employed focusing four types of representative viral proteins (spike, membrane, envelope and nucleoprotein) of SARS-CoV-2, HCoV-229E, HCoV-OC43, SARS-CoV, HCoV-NL63, HKU1, MERS-CoV, HKU4, HKU5 and BufCoV-HKU26. The findings clearly demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 exhibited evolutionary convergent relation with previously reported SARS-CoV. It was also found that SARS-CoV-2 proteins were highly similar and identical to SARS-CoV proteins, though proteins from other coronaviruses showed lower level of similarity and identical patterns. The cross-checked conservancy analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antigenic epitopes showed significant conservancy with antigenic epitopes derived from SARS-CoV. The study also prioritized the temperature comparison through satellite imaging alongside compiling and analyzing the epidemiological outbreak information on the 2019 novel coronavirus based on several open datasets on COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and discussed possible threats to Bangladesh.
Highlights • Phylogenetic tree clearly demonstrating the ancestral origin and distant evolutionary relationships of the newly epidemic novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. • SARS-CoV-2 proteins showed highest level of similarity and identical patterns with SARS-CoV. • SARS-CoV-2 antigenic epitopes were significantly conserved with antigenic epitopes derived from SARS-CoV • COVID-19 poses a great burden across the world in terms of geographical coverage, occurrence of cases and death toll.