The novel coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoV) is a respiratory virus originating from Wuhan, China that has spread to many countries, causing an outbreak. Headlines on its rapid spread have dominated media and news sites globally, and a lot remains unknown about how the virus infects humans, how it spreads, and how deadly it really is. In this episode of Beyond the Abstract, Ellen and Derek tackle a paper deposited in bioRxiv on how 2019-nCoV infects human cells with similarities to the SARS coronavirus. They may answer questions you have related to the outbreak and put many commonly cited statistics into perspective. Finally, they comment on a new age of science sharing through bioRxiv, a preprint server that has allowed for quicker and cheaper dissemination of science.

This episode was recorded on February 11th, 2020. Shortly after recording this episode, the WHO announced that the virus will be renamed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Hoffman et al. The novel coronavirus 2019 (2019-nCoV) uses the SARS-coronavirus receptor ACE2 and the cellular protease TMPRSS2 for entry into target cells. bioRxiv, 2020. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.31.929042v1