Table 1.

Comparison of S protein sequences from HCoV-OC43_NV, HCoV-OC43_QUE and HCoV-OC43_TC

S protein residuea	HCoV-OC43NV	HCoV-OC43QUEb	HCoV-OC43TC
33 (31,33)	Serine	Threonine	Threonine
491 (489,495)	Histidine	Asparagine	Asparagine
759 (757,765)	Histidine	Arginine	Arginine
Virus passage history	Only in suckling mouse brain	5–6 times in HRT-18 cells	Extensively (>10) in HRT-18 cells
Neurovirulence	Uniformly lethal to adult mice	Lethal only to young (<21 days) micec	Avirulent in miced

^aS protein residue numbering is based on HCoV-OC43_NV strain, with the corresponding residues for HCoV-OC43_QUE and HCoV-OC43_TC in parentheses. S1 and S2 encompass amino acids 1–759 and 760–1353 to 1365, respectively.

^bThe sequence for HCoV-OC43_QUE corresponds to GenPept accession number AAT84362, submitted by St-Jean et al. (St-Jean et al., 2004).

^cJacomy and Talbot (2003).

^dFig. 1.