> We found 4 insertions in the spike
> glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses.
>
> The finding of 4 unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV, all of which have
> identity /similarity to amino acid residues in key structural proteins of HIV-1 is unlikely to be
> fortuitous in nature.
>
> Surprisingly, each of the four inserts aligned with short segments of the Human immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV-1) proteins.
>
> Although, the 4 inserts represent discontiguous short stretches of amino acids in spike glycoprotein
> of 2019-nCoV, the fact that all three of them share amino acid identity or similarity with HIV-1
> gp120 and HIV-1 Gag (among all annotated virus proteins) suggests that this is not a random
> fortuitous finding. In other words, one may sporadically expect a fortuitous match for a stretch of
> 6-12 contiguous amino acid residues in an unrelated protein. However, it is unlikely that all 4
> inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike glycoprotein fortuitously match with 2 key structural proteins of
> an unrelated virus (HIV-1).
>
> We found fournew insertions in the protein of 2019-nCoV- “GTNGTKR” (IS1), “HKNNKS” (IS2), “GDSSSG”
> (IS3) and “QTNSPRRA” (IS4) (Figure 2). To our surprise, these sequence insertions were not only
> absent in S protein of SARS but were also not observed in any other member of the Coronaviridae
> family (Supplementary figure).
