Genetic Characterisation and Comparison of Three Human Coronaviruses (HKU1, OC43, 229E) from Patients and Bovine Coronavirus (BCoV) from Cattle with Respiratory Disease in Slovenia

Abstract

Coronaviruses (CoV) are widely distributed pathogens of human and animals and can cause mild or severe respiratory and gastrointestinal disease. Antigenic and genetic similarity of some CoVs within the Betacoronavirus genus is evident. Therefore, for the first time in Slovenia, we investigated the genetic diversity of partial 390-nucleotides of RNA-dependent-RNA polymerase gene (RdRp) for 66 human (HCoV) and 24 bovine CoV (BCoV) positive samples, collected between 2010 and 2016 from human patients and cattle with respiratory disease. The characterized CoV strains belong to four different clusters, in three separate human clusters HCoV-HKU1 (n = 34), HCoV-OC43 (n = 31) and HCoV 229E (n = 1) and bovine grouping only as BCoVs (n = 24). BCoVs from cattle and HCoV-OC43 were genetically the most closely related and share 96.4–97.1% nucleotide and 96.9–98.5% amino acid identity.