Fig. 1

Sequence similarity among the coronavirus genomic RNAs and secondary structure prediction. a Alignment of the whole genome sequence of MERS-CoV (accession number NC_019843.3) with that of SARS-CoV (accession number AY291451.1) and MHV (accession number NC_001846.1) by NCBI blastn. Regions with the highest conservation (alignment score ≧ 200) are indicated by open boxes followed by alignment scores 80–200, 50–80, 40–50, and < 40 as indicated. MERS-CoV RNA fragments spanning nt 19,757 to 20,434 [RNA(19757–20434)] and nt 19,756 to 20,182 [RNA(19756–20182)] with sequence diversity were subjected to secondary structure prediction. b Secondary structure prediction. Secondary structure of MERS-CoV RNA(19757–20434) and RNA(19756–20182) were analyzed by Mfold. Two subdomains of 94-nt (nt 19,801 to 19,894) and 152-nt (nt 20,022 to 20,173) that form stable substructures in both RNA fragments were colored yellow