Related Articles Probable Pangolin Origin of SARS CoV 2 Associated with the COVID 19 Outbreak Curr Biol 2020 Mar 13 Authors Zhang T Wu Q Zhang Z Abstract An outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 COVID 19 caused by the 2019 novel coronavirus SARS CoV 2 began in the city of Wuhan in China and has widely spread worldwide Currently it is vital to explore potential intermediate hosts of SARS CoV 2 to control COVID 19 spread Therefore we reinvestigated published data from pangolin lung samples from which SARS CoV like CoVs were detected by Liu et al 1 We found genomic and evolutionary evidence of the occurrence of a SARS CoV 2 like CoV named Pangolin CoV in dead Malayan pangolins Pangolin CoV is 91 02 and 90 55 identical to SARS CoV 2 and BatCoV RaTG13 respectively at the whole genome level Aside from RaTG13 Pangolin CoV is the most closely related CoV to SARS CoV 2 The S1 protein of Pangolin CoV is much more closely related to SARS CoV 2 than to RaTG13 Five key amino acid residues involved in the interaction with human ACE2 are completely consistent between Pangolin CoV and SARS CoV 2 but four amino acid mutations are present in RaTG13 Both Pangolin CoV and RaTG13 lost the putative furin recognition sequence motif at S1 S2 cleavage site that can be observed in the SARS CoV 2 Conclusively this study suggests that pangolin species are a natural reservoir of SARS CoV 2 like CoVs PMID 32197085 PubMed as supplied by publisher