Back

The impact of mutations on the structural and functional properties of SARS-CoV-2 proteins: A comprehensive bioinformatics analysis

Ikram, A.; Naz, A.; Awan, F.; Rauff, B.; Obaid, A.; Hakim, M. S.; Malik, A.

2021-03-01 bioinformatics
10.1101/2021.03.01.433340 bioRxiv
Show abstract

An in-depth analysis of first wave SARS-CoV-2 genome is required to identify various mutations that significantly affect viral fitness. In the present study, we have performed comprehensive in-silico mutational analysis of 3C-like protease (3CLpro), RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), and spike (S) proteins with the aim of gaining important insights into first wave virus mutations and their functional and structural impact on SARS-CoV-2 proteins. Our integrated analysis gathered 3465 SARS-CoV-2 sequences and identified 92 mutations in S, 37 in RdRp, and 11 in 3CLpro regions. The impact of those mutations was also investigated using various in silico approaches. Among these 32 mutations in S, 15 in RdRp, and 3 in 3CLpro proteins are found to be deleterious in nature and could alter the structural and functional behavior of the encoded proteins. D614G mutation in spike and P323L in RdRp are the globally dominant variants with a high frequency. Most of them have also been found in the binding moiety of the viral proteins which determine their critical involvement in the host-pathogen interactions and drug targets. The findings of the current study may facilitate better understanding of COVID-19 diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics.

Matching journals

The top 10 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.