Coronaviruses: A Review of the Genetics and Proteins Associated with the Life Cycle of SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

The history of coronaviruses dates back to the 1960s. There have been several coronaviruses induced epidemics such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in the recent past. More recently, another coronavirus-induced disease, namely COVID-19 emerged as an epidemic and rapidly developed into a pandemic due to the high transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2. It emerged as an epidemic novel COVID-19, in late 2019, instigated by SARS-CoV2. This review analyses the different aspects of SARS-CoV-2 including its genomic structure, protein composition, transmission mode, and life cycle. SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus, which codes four structural proteins along with various accessory proteins. A unique property of COVID-19 is that it incorporates a polybasic cleavage site, which increases its pathogenicity. The genomic variation of COVID-19/SARS-CoV-2 is assumed to be the reason behind its high transmissibility. It was identified that this genomic variation hinders the development of treatment against this disease. This review aims to facilitate the prevention of this infectious disease as well as suggest possible treatment regimens.