Structural and energetic analyses of SARS-CoV-2 <i>N</i>-terminal domain characterise sugar binding pockets and suggest putative impacts of variants on COVID-19 transmission.

ABSTRACT: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by SARS-CoV-2 is an ongoing pandemic that causes significant health/socioeconomic burden. Variants of concern (VOCs) have emerged affecting transmissibility, disease severity and re-infection risk. Studies suggest that the - N-terminal domain (NTD) of the spike protein may have a role in facilitating virus entry via sialic-acid receptor binding. Furthermore, most VOCs include novel NTD variants. Despite global sequence and structure similarity, most sialic-acid binding pockets in NTD vary across coronaviruses. Our work suggests ongoing evolutionary tuning of the sugar-binding pockets and recent analyses have shown that NTD insertions in VOCs tend to lie close to loops. We extended the structural characterisation of these sugar-binding pocke

SUBMITTER: Lam SD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9639386 | biostudies-literature | 2022

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature