Protein structural heterogeneity: A hypothesis for the basis of proteolytic recognition by the main protease of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.

ABSTRACT: The main protease (M^pro) of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 is a key enzyme in viral replication and a promising target for the development of antiviral therapeutics. The understanding of this protein is based on a number of observations derived from earlier x-ray structures, which mostly consider substrates or ligands as the main reason behind modulation of the active site. This lead to the concept of substrate-induced subsite cooperativity as an initial attempt to explain the dual binding specificity of this enzyme in recognizing the cleavage sequences at its N- and C-termini, which are important processing steps in obtaining the mature protease. The presented hypothesis proposes that structural heterogeneity is a property of the enzyme, independent of the presence of a substrate or l

SUBMITTER: Behnam MAM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7817518 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature