Conveners
Neutrons in the fight against virus diseases
- Leighton Coates (Oak Ridge National Laboratory)
The genetic material of viruses is typically protected in an icosahedral capsid, which is primarily assembled from over a hundred subunits of the same protein in a spontaneous self-assembly process. Similar highly efficient assembly processes are ubiquitous in biological systems, and viral capsids in particular present a unique platform to exploit for therapeutic advances in the targeted...
COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2, is a global health and economic catastrophe. The viral main protease (Mpro) is indispensable for SARS-CoV-2 replication and thus is an important target for small-molecule antivirals. Neutrons are an ideal probe to observe protonation states of ionizable amino acids at near-physiological temperature, directly determining their electric charges – crucial...
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a viral infectious disease caused by the new coronavirus strain (CoV2). The SARS-CoV2 replication and transcription complex (RTC) is formed with at least 9 NSPs that are arranged into one functional assembly. The non-structural proteins (NSPs) Nsp7 and 8 are important components of this complex. Our overall aim was to investigate the structural...
The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) papain-like protease (PLpro) is essential for the virus replication. PLpro has the additional function of removing ubiquitin and ISG15 (Interferon-stimulated gene 15) from host-cell proteins to aid coronaviruses in their evasion of the host innate immune responses. PLpro is thus an excellent drug target for a two-fold strategy to...