Research Support

Coronavirus primer

A new coronavirus disease, COVID-19, emerged in December in the mainland Chinese city of Wuhan, and the outbreak shows no signs of abating, partly because transmission in not yet fully understood. As scientists probe the biology of the virus and investigate treatments, they are also drawing on a solid body of existing research. An article in the Annual Review of Virology provides an evolutionary perspective on coronaviruses, which, in addition to causing respiratory diseases in people, infect a wide range of birds and mammals. The Annual Review of Microbiology offers a deep dive into how human coronaviruses interact with us; of the six previously identified coronaviruses infecting people, four in circulation probably contribute to 15 percent to 30 percent of cases of the common cold.

Ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.
Photo credit: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAM

Relevant review articles

To support research efforts, Annual Reviews has curated a group of articles that may be useful for the scientific community and made them freely available.

• Human Coronavirus: Host-Pathogen Interaction
• Coronavirus Host Range Expansion and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Emergence: Biochemical Mechanisms and Evolutionary Perspectives
• Structure, Function, and Evolution of Coronavirus Spike Proteins
• Middle East Respiratory Syndrome: Emergence of a Pathogenic Human Coronavirus
• Glycan Engagement by Viruses: Receptor Switches and Specificity
• Thinking Outside the Triangle: Replication Fidelity of the Largest RNA Viruses
• Biochemical Aspects of Coronavirus Replication and Virus-Host Interaction
• Birth and Pathogenesis of Rogue Respiratory Viruses
• CORONAVIRUS: ORGANIZATION, REPLICATION AND EXPRESSION OF GENOME