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Figure 1: The spike caption of SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19. RIKEN researchers have found that the D614G mutation restructures the Spike protein toward a state that is primed for infecting cells. Credit: © Laguna Design
Molecular modeling suggests structural consequences of an early protein mutation that promoted viral transmission.
RIKEN researchers discovered that an early mutation (D614G) in the
The rapid spread of
Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and other variants of concern have been making news throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But the most significant mutation may have occurred in the early days of the pandemic, and it might have enabled the virus to spread so rapidly.
Yuji Sugita of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) and Hisham Dokainish, who was at R-CCS at the time of the study, investigated the effect of mutations on viral structure. They did this by simulating the atomic positions of molecules found in different forms of the virus’s important spike protein—a tool coronaviruses use to bind and enter human cells.
They found that the substitution of a single amino
Sugita’s team is now performing similar investigations of adaptive viral mutations that arose later in the course of the pandemic, including those found in the Omicron variant.
“Information obtained from our molecular dynamics simulations should help increase the opportunities for us to find effective drugs and other medicines,” he says.
Reference: “Structural effects of spike protein D614G mutation in SARS-CoV-2” by Hisham M. Dokainish and Yuji Sugita, 16 November 2022, Biophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.11.025
Figure 1: The spike caption of SARS-CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19. RIKEN researchers have found that the D614G mutation restructures the Spike protein toward a state that is primed for infecting cells. Credit: © Laguna Design
Molecular modeling suggests structural consequences of an early protein mutation that promoted viral transmission.
RIKEN researchers discovered that an early mutation (D614G) in the
Alpha, Delta, Omicron, and other variants of concern have been making news throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. But the most significant mutation may have occurred in the early days of the pandemic, and it might have enabled the virus to spread so rapidly.
Yuji Sugita of the RIKEN Center for Computational Science (R-CCS) and Hisham Dokainish, who was at R-CCS at the time of the study, investigated the effect of mutations on viral structure. They did this by simulating the atomic positions of molecules found in different forms of the virus’s important spike protein—a tool coronaviruses use to bind and enter human cells.
They found that the substitution of a single amino
Sugita’s team is now performing similar investigations of adaptive viral mutations that arose later in the course of the pandemic, including those found in the Omicron variant.
“Information obtained from our molecular dynamics simulations should help increase the opportunities for us to find effective drugs and other medicines,” he says.
Reference: “Structural effects of spike protein D614G mutation in SARS-CoV-2” by Hisham M. Dokainish and Yuji Sugita, 16 November 2022, Biophysical Journal.
DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2022.11.025
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You must be joking. This is yesterdays news. The mutation was achieved in work at Wuhan paid for by the US
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