Molecular characterization and pathogenicity of a novel Chinese porcine deltacoronavirus strain CH/HLJ/20 isolated from diarrheic piglets
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) is an emerging enteric coronavirus that causes acute diarrhea and high mortality in neonatal piglets. In this study, we isolated and characterized a novel PDCoV strain, CH/HLJ/20, from diarrheic piglets in Northeast China. Full-length genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis revealed that CH/HLJ/20 belongs to the Chinese lineage but harbors distinct recombination signals within the S gene, with Korea/DH1/2017 and CHN/Tianjin/2016 identified as putative parental strains. Comparative analysis identified two unique amino acid substitutions (Q10H and N98K) within the receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the spike protein. Structural modeling and molecular docking revealed that the CH/HLJ/20 RBD retains binding compatibility with aminopeptidase N (APN) receptors from multiple species, including pig, human, dog, cat, and chicken, indicating broad host receptor adaptability. Docking simulations using sequence-reverted mutants suggested that these substitutions may slightly attenuate receptor-binding affinity, potentially influencing cross-species transmission. Notably, the N98K residue has been identified as a critical site involved in both APN binding and neutralizing epitopes, therefore, its mutation may influence receptor engagement and antigenic properties. In vivo virus infection experiments demonstrated that CH/HLJ/20 caused rapid disease onset and 100% mortality in neonatal piglets, with severe villous atrophy and high intestinal viral loads. These findings highlight the evolving genomic diversity, pathogenicity, and zoonotic potential of PDCoV, underscoring the critical importance of continuous viral surveillance, timely isolation and functional characterization of emerging strains, and enhanced understanding of cross-species transmission mechanisms to inform effective disease control and prevention strategies.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".