Short sequence motif dynamics in the SARS-CoV-2 genome suggest a role for cytosine deamination in CpG reduction

摘要

Dear Editor,The apolipoprotein B editing complex(APOBEC)protein family members are host antiviral enzymes known for catalyzing cytosine to uracil(C>U)deamination in foreign single-stranded DNA(ssDNA)and RNA(ssRNA)(Blanc and Davidson,2010;Salter and Smith,2018).Enzymatic target motifs for most of the APOBEC enzymes have been experimentally identified,among which the most common ones are 5′-[T/U]C-3′and 5′-CC-3′for DNA/RNA substrates(Salter and Smith,2018;McDaniel et al.,2020).It was recently suggested that SARS-CoV-2 undergoes genome editing by host-dependent RNA-editing proteins such as APOBEC(Di Giorgio et al.,2020;Rice et al.,2020;Simmonds,2020;Schmidt et al.,2021).