New pathogenic mechanism of SARS virus

摘要

The outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2002 caused alarm across the world. A coronavirus in humans, called SARS-CoV, has been identified as the causative agent for this killer disease. It is discovered to have a large single-positive-strand RNA genome that contains as many as 14 open reading frames (ORFs), which are sequences of DNA or RNA that can be translated into a protein. Identification and characterization of new functional proteins from the ORFs will be helpful for understanding the pathogenesis of SARS-CoV.