In-Silico evidence for two receptors based strategy of SARS-CoV-2

by Edoardo Milanetti (Dipartimento di Fisica Sapienza / Center for Life Sciences IIT)

Thursday 9 Apr 2020, 15:00 → 16:30 Europe/Rome

Seminario trasmesso in teleconferenza (Dip. di Fisica)

INDIRIZZO PER SEGUIRE IL SEMINARIO IN TELECONFERENZA:

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We propose a general numerical method able to determine the complementarity between portions of protein surfaces, which is based on the representation of the molecular iso-electron density surface in terms of 2D Zernike polynomials. Our method allows to evaluate the geometrical shape complementarity between interacting proteins, that was unfeasible with previous methods. We investigated the interaction between the Spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and human cellular receptors. We show that SARS-CoV-2 has a dual strategy: its spike protein interacts with sialic acid receptors of the cells in the upper airways, in addition to the known interaction with Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2.