Exploring Coronavirus by the Numbers.

Numerical data sometimes reveal facts that otherwise are concealed within an onslaught of information from an overwhelming number of sources. Ron Milo, professor in the Department of Molecular Biology, and research student Yinon Bar-On of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, together with American colleagues Rob Phillips (professor of biophysics, biology, and physics at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena) and Avi Flamholz (researcher in the Department of Molecular & Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley), have employed an original research method to organize the flood of coronavirus information in an orderly framework.

The scientists examined hundreds of studies from around the world. One of the interesting findings highlighted by the collected data is the similarity between the coronavirus genome and the genome of other viruses. For example, the genome of the coronavirus is 96% identical to a coronavirus genome that infects bats; 91% identical to a coronavirus genome that infects scaly anteaters (pangolins); 80%...