SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) Spike Matched Pair

Background:

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), formerly known as 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease, is an infectious disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, a virus closely related to the SARS virus (1). The disease is the cause of the 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak (2). The structure of 2019-nCoV consists of the following: a Spike protein (S), hemagglutinin-esterease dimer (HE), a membrane glycoprotein (M), an envelope protein (E) a nucleoclapid protein (N) and RNA. Coronavirus invades cells through Spike (S) glycoproteins, a class I fusion protein. It is the major viral surface protein that coronavirus uses to bind to the human cell surface receptor. It also mediates the fusion of host and viral cell membrane, allowing the virus to enter human cells and begin infection (3). The spike protein is the major target for neutralizing antibodies and vaccine development (4). The protein modeling suggests that there is strong interaction between Spike protein receptor-binding domain and its host receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), which regulate both the cross-species and human-to-human transmissions of COVID-19 (5). The recent study has shown that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds ACE2 with higher affinity than SARS-CoV spike protein (6).