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Overview: Coronaviruses were recognized as a group of enveloped, RNA viruses in 1968 and accepted by the International Committee on the Taxonomy of Viruses as a separate family, the Coronaviridae, in 1975. By 1978, it had become evident that the coronavirus genomic RNA was infectious (i. e. , positive strand), and by 1983, at least the framework of the coronavirus replication strategy had been per- ceived. Subsequently, with the application of recombinant DNA techniques, there have been remarkable advances in our understanding of the molecular biology of coronaviruses, and a mass of structural
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