6.1.4. Torovirus
In torovirus, which belongs to the family Coronaviridae, the toroviruses are grouped into the Torovirinae subfamily and the Torovirus genus. The known toroviruses can infect four species of hosts, constituting bovine, equine, porcine and human toroviruses. They mildly infect swine and cattle through the HE protein, which is similar to the β-CoV HE protein [68]. The HE protein is a class I membrane glycoprotein which forms homodimers with a MW of 65 kDa. The RDE protein HE reversibly binds to glycans [15] through binding to SAs. The acetyl-esterase activity disrupts SA binding. HE hemagglutinates mouse erythrocytes and cleaves the acetyl-ester linkage of glycans and acetylated synthetic substrate p-nitrophenyl acetate (pNPA) [69]. Similar to CoV, torovirus HE is an acetylesterase type, which cleaves the O-acetyl group from the SA C-9 position using Neu5,9Ac2 and N-acetyl-7(8),9-O-NeuAc [64]. However, torovirus HE exhibits a restricted specificity for the Neu5,9Ac2 substrate, but not for the Neu5,7(8),9Ac3 substrate, with a unique SA-binding site generated by a single amino acid difference in porcine Thr73 and bovine Ser64 for each HE [70].