Preprint
Brief Report

Understanding the Role of Key Point Mutations in Receptor Binding Domain of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein

This version is not peer-reviewed.

Submitted:

25 March 2020

Posted:

26 March 2020

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Abstract
The recent outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV or SARS-CoV-2) and its spread to the whole world is currently posing one of the major threat to human health and the world economy. It has been suggested that 2019-nCoV is similar to SARS-CoV based on the genome sequence comparison. Despite the genomic similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2, the spike glycoprotein and receptor binding domain in SARS-CoV-2 shows considerable difference compared to SARS-CoV, due to the presence of several point mutations. We analyzed the receptor binding domain (RBD) from recently published 3D structure of spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 and compared with RBD of SARS-CoV. The observations highlight few important features of RBD in the light of the recently published findings from the 3D structures of spike glycoprotein and its complex with human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) (Yan, R., et al. (2020); Wrapp, D., et al. (2020); Walls, A. C., et al. (2020)).
Keywords: 
Subject: 
Biology and Life Sciences  -   Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Preprints on COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
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