Fig. 3.

Predicted secondary structure of viral sequences highly conserved between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. (A) Secondary structure of the COV002 region of SARS-CoV (left) and the corresponding region of the SARS-CoV-2 genome (right). (B) Secondary structure of the COV001 region of SARS-CoV (left) and the corresponding region of the SARS-CoV-2 genome (right). (C) The secondary structure of the COV001 region of SARS-CoV was mutated in silico. The putative stem-loop structure caused by in silico mutation at the positions indicated by the black arrows suggest that these mutations are critical for the formation of a stem-loop similar to that of Stem #1 observed for the corresponding region of SARS-CoV-2. Inferred stem-loops are indicated with red boxes (Stem #1–4), and base coloring was used to indicate the base-pairing probability. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)