The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in December 2019, reportedly caused by novel coronavirus known as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), thereby the concerns to combat the pandemic has risen worldwide. The pandemic began in Wuhan, China and soon spread at an unprecedented rate that cost hundreds of thousands of lives due to high transmissibility and pathogenicity. The disease severity has been the subject of various factors including host immune response, gender, genetic factors, preexisting medical conditons, and the virus’s evolutionary pattern. Although the causes of evolution are yet to be known, the research studies demonstrate the changes in the structural genome of the virus, particulary the genes that encode the receptor-binding proteins (RBD). The purpose of this review is to provide the current literature and findings on virology of SARS-CV-2 structure and genetic factors of the host and the virus that may shed lights to future studies of diagnosis and therapies.
Seyda Demirkol, Nasim Kherad, Elif Sibel Aslan, Saadet Busra Aksoyer Sezgin, Sema Ketenci, Ebru Nur Ay, İlhan Yaylım, and Meryem Alagoz*