Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) is the first severe and readily transmissible new disease to emerge in the 21st Century. Although much about SARS remains poorly understood, it is clear that this disease has major implications, both for public health and the global economy. SARS emerged amongst the Chinese population in mid November 2002, but did not leave Guangdong Province until mid February 2003, when an infected individual brought the virus to a hotel in Hong Kong. From there, hotel guests rapidly disseminated the disease to distant places, such as Singapore, Vietnam and Canada. On August 7th 2003, 8422 cases were confirmed worldwide with overall case fatalities estimated at 14-15 %; in persons over 50, the fatality exceeded 50%. SARS dramatically demonstrates the global havoc wreaked by a newly emerging infectious disease.
SARS constitutes a particularly serious threat as there is no vaccine to date and no effective treatment, forcing health authorities to rely on traditional measures of isolation and quarantine. In addition, current diagnostic tests are limited in reliability, allowing potentially-infected patients to slip through the net of isolation and infection control. In light of these statistics, and the potential re-emergence of the SARS coronavirus (CoV), a comprehensive functional and structural characterization of the virus is essential. The studies should delineate vital protein interactions within the virus during its lifecycle and identify the role of viral proteins responsible for modulating the host response. The products of such studies will ultimately accelerate the development of therapeutics. Coronaviruses have the largest genomes among RNA viruses, and constitute the largest replicating RNA molecules. The entire SARS-CoV genome encodes approximately 10,000 amino acid residues in 33 predicted mature polypeptides. They are etiological agents in a wide variety of veterinary diseases, including upper respiratory infections, enteritis, encephalitis, nephritis, peritonitis and a demyelinating encephalomyelitis in mice, and can cause mild to severe respiratory and enteric infections in humans.
For a current summary on what is known on the SARS-CoV proteome please click here.
