Back

A novel conformational state for SARS-CoV-2 main protease

Fornasier, E.; Macchia, M. L.; Giachin, G.; Sosic, A.; Pavan, M.; Sturlese, M.; Salata, C.; Moro, S.; Gatto, B.; Bellanda, M.; Battistutta, R.

2021-03-04 biochemistry
10.1101/2021.03.04.433882 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) has a pivotal role in mediating viral genome replication and transcription of coronavirus, making it a promising target for drugs against Covid-19 pandemic. Here we present a crystal structure of Mpro disclosing new structural features of key regions of the enzyme. We show that the oxyanion loop, involved in substrate recognition and enzymatic activity, can adopt a new conformation, which is stable and significantly different from the known ones. In this new state the S1 subsite of the substrate binding region is completely reshaped and a new cavity near the S2 subsite is created. This new structural information expands the knowledge of the conformational space available to Mpro, paving the way for the design of novel classes of inhibitors specifically designed to target this unprecedented binding site conformation, thus enlarging the chemical space for urgent antiviral drugs against Covid-19 pandemic.

Matching journals

The top 5 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.