In December 2019

Wuhan

the capital of Hubei Province in China

report⁃ ed a series of unexplained cases of pneumonia

which has been confirmed to be an acute infectious respiratory disease caused by Novel Corona Virus 2019 (2019-nCoV) infection. The World Health Organization (WHO) named this pneumonia Corona Virus Disease 2019(COVID-19). The 21st century had witnessed the spread of two previously unrecognized coronavi⁃ ruses around the world with high pathogenicity before

namely severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East respirato⁃ ry syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) respectively. At present

2019- nCoV 's genome has been sequenced by researchers all over the world rep⁃ resented by China. Based on the systematic review and analysis of the ge⁃ nomic sequence characteristics of three highly pathogenic coronaviruses

this paper expounds the basic characteristics of the genomes of SARSCoV

MERS-CoV and 2019-nCoV

which all belong to β-coronaviruses

the functionally important ORFs

ORF1a

ORF1b and major structural pro⁃ teins including the spike (S)

membrane (M) and envelop (E) and nucleic⁃ capsid (N) proteins have no significant difference with each other. Howev⁃ er

as the majority of genetic variations being seen at the N-terminal part of S protein

2019-nCoV aligned best with the bat SARS-like virus bat-SLCoVZX45. And Structure analysis of the spike (S) protein of 2019-nCoV showed that it's S protein only binds weakly to the Angiotensin Converting Enzyme2 (ACE2) receptor on human cells whereas the human SARS-Cov exhibits high affinity to the ACE receptor and MERS-Cov does not need ACE2 to infect human cells

its receptor on human cells is DPP4. In the fu⁃ ture

we hope to provide new ideas for the prevention and treatment of coro⁃ navirus by strengthening the research of coronavirus S protein and ACE2 receptor

and continuous surveillance and genomic characterization of coronaviruses from bats are necessaryduetopotentialrisksofhumaninfectioninducedbyageneticmutation.