The COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed unprecedented scientific data and reagent sharing and collaboration, which enabled understanding the virology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and vaccine development at record speed. The pandemic, however, has also raised awareness of the danger posed by the family of coronaviruses, of which 7 are known to infect humans and dozens have been identified in reservoir species, such as bats, rodents, or livestock. To facilitate understanding the commonalities and specifics of coronavirus infections and aspects of viral biology that determine their level of lethality to the human host, we have generated a collection of freely available clones encoding nearly all human coronavirus proteins known to date. We hope that this flexible, Gateway-compatible vector collection will encourage further research into the interactions of coronaviruses with their human host, to increase preparedness for future zoonotic viral outbreaks.
Keywords: 229E; Gateway Entry clone; HCoV; HKU1; MERS; NL63; OC43; SARS-CoV-2; coding sequence; coronavirus.
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Genetics Society of America.