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Updated: Nov 22, 2025

Use of a Recombinant Mosquito Densovirus As a Gene Delivery Vector for the Functional Analysis of Genes in Mosquito Larvae
Published on: October 6, 2017
A genetic element in the SARS-CoV-2 genome is shared with multiple insect species
Torstein Tengs1, Charles F Delwiche2, Christine Monceyron Jonassen3
1Section of Molecular Toxicology, Department of Environmental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, Norway.
Abstract:
SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the subgenus Sarbecovirus and thus contains the genetic element s2m. We have extensively mined nucleotide data in GenBank in order to obtain a comprehensive list of s2m sequences both in the four virus families where s2m has previously been described and in other groups of organisms. Surprisingly, there seems to be a xenologue of s2m in a large number of insect species. The function of s2m is unknown, but our data show a very high degree of sequence conservation both in insects and in viruses and that the version of s2m found in SARS-CoV-2 has unique features, not seen in any other virus or insect strains.
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