Folding of SARS-CoV2 Genome Reveals Drug Targets
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for Runaway1956:
Folding of SARS-CoV2 genome reveals drug targets:
The genetic code of the SARS-CoV2 virus is exactly 29,902 characters long, strung through a long RNA molecule. It contains the information for the production of 27 proteins. This is not much compared to the possible 40,000 kinds of protein that a human cell can produce. Viruses, however, use the metabolic processes of their host cells to multiply. Crucial to this strategy is that viruses can precisely control the synthesis of their own proteins.
SARS-CoV2 uses the spatial folding of its RNA hereditary molecule as control element for the production of proteins: predominantly in areas that do not code for the viral proteins, RNA single strands adopt structures with RNA double strand sections and loops. However, until now the only models of these foldings have been based on computer analyzes and indirect experimental evidence.
Now, an international team of scientists led by chemists and biochemists at Goethe University and TU Darmstadt have experimentally tested the models for the first time. Researchers from the Israeli Weizmann Institute of Science, the Swedish Karolinska Institute and the Catholic University of Valencia were also involved.
Journal Reference:
Anna Wacker, Julia E. Weigand, Sabine R. Akabayov, et al. Secondary structure determination of conserved SARS-CoV-2 RNA elements by NMR spectroscopy [open], Nucleic Acids Research (DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkaa1013)
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