Title: More and More Coronaviruses

Presenter: Prof. Patrick CY Woo

University: The University of Hong Kong

Time: 10:30-11:45, 15 July, 2011

Abstract: The recent SARS epidemic has boosted global interest in the discovery of novel human and animal coronaviruses. The number of coronavirus species with complete genomes available has increased from nine in 2003 to about 30 in 2011, of which nine, including human coronavirus HKU1 (Betacoronavirus subgroup A), SARS-related Rhinolophus bat coronavirus (Betacoronavirus subgroup B), Rhinolophus bat coronavirus HKU2 (Alphacoronavirus), three bat coronaviruses of two novel subgroups (C and D) in Betacoronavirus, and three avian coronaviruses which constitute a proposed novel genus (Deltacoronavirus) were sequenced by our laboratory. Recently, we have also developed a comprehensive database, CoVDB (http://covdb.microbiology.hku.hk), of annotated coronavirus genes and genomes, for rapid and accurate batch sequence retrieval, the cornerstone and bottleneck for comparative gene or genome analysis. With the increasing amount of genomes available and the user-friendly database, easy comparative genome analysis and more specific blast search results can be generated for efficient downstream analysis.

Venue: A202, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences