ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2026
Clade C MERS-CoV camel strains vary in protease utilization during viral entry.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a lethal pathogen with pandemic potential. Clade A and B MERS-CoV viruses have caused outbreaks in the Middle East since 2012 when they initially spilled over from camels to humans. Clade C viruses, however, are only found in camels across Africa and the spillover potential of these viruses seems to be lower than for clade A/B strains but remains to be fully understood. Here, we report that clade C spikes are less well-cleaved at the S1/S2 boundary than clade A or B viral spikes and that most clade C spikes induce reduced syncytium formation. Additionally, we demonstrate that several East African clade C strains are less able to utilize the TMPRSS2-mediated pathway for viral entry in both cell lines and primary nasal epithelial cultures. We map the molecular basis of this reduced TMPRSS2 usage to the N-terminal domain and subdomain 2 of East African clade C MERS-CoV. We suggest that reduced usage of the TMPRSS2-mediated entry pathway may underlie the reduced replication of East African clade C strains in humans, while the reduced replication of West African strains remains to be further investigated. Altered protease usage may contribute to differential tropism of East African clade C strains and indicate geographically distinct selection pressures on spike between MERS-CoV strains circulating in camels.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.