Investigation of cross-neutralization between different coronavirus species

Abstract

Coronaviruses are highly variable RNA viruses. They are distributed worldwide and infect humans and a variety of animals. They have caused major outbreaks globally, including SARSCoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. Coronaviruses can also be detrimental to animal health and can cause huge economic impacts in animal production. Investigating the relationship between animal and human coronaviruses may provide valuable information for both human and veterinary medicine. In this research, we investigate whether antibodies of human coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 can cross neutralise the porcine virus, TGEV and whether there is an antibody in human blood that can neutralise the swine virus. The serological method used to investigate the cross-reactivity for this investigation was virus neutralisation test. TGEV is an alphacoronavirus and SARSCoV-2 is a betacoronavirus. The virus neutralisation test was evaluated with neutral red staining. A positive result was determined by the lack of cytopathogenic effects in the cell culture. The highest dilution of serum that prevented infectivity established the neutralising antibody titre. The virus neutralisation test is effective to evaluate serological cross-reactivity between the antibodies of SARS-CoV-2 and TGEV that may correlate with cross-protection between these two viruses.