ﻻ يوجد ملخص باللغة العربية
Despite the huge effort to contain the infection, the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has rapidly become pandemics, mainly due to its extremely high human-to-human transmission capability, and a surprisingly high viral charge of symptom-less people. While the seek of a vaccine is still ongoing, promising results have been obtained with antiviral compounds. In particular, lactoferrin is found to have beneficial effects both in preventing and soothing the infection. Here, we explore the possible molecular mechanisms with which lactoferrin interferes with SARS-CoV-2 cell invasion, preventing attachment and/or entry of the virus. To this aim, we search for possible interactions lactoferrin may have with virus structural proteins and host receptors. Representing the molecular iso-electron surface of proteins in terms of 2D-Zernike descriptors, we (i) identified putative regions on the lactoferrin surface able to bind sialic acid receptors on the host cell membrane, sheltering the cell from the virus attachment; (ii) showed that no significant shape complementarity is present between lactoferrin and the ACE2 receptor, while (iii) two high complementarity regions are found on the N- and C-terminal domains of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, hinting at a possible competition between lactoferrin and ACE2 for the binding to the spike protein.
The deadly coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has gone out of control globally. Despite much effort by scientists, medical experts, and society in general, the slow prog
The recent global surge in COVID-19 infections has been fueled by new SARS-CoV-2 variants, namely Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, etc. The molecular mechanism underlying such surge is elusive due to 4,653 non-degenerate mutations on the spike protein, whi
Currently, there is no effective antiviral drugs nor vaccine for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Due to its high conservativeness and low similarity with human genes, SARS-CoV-2 mai
The SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) protein facilitates viral infection, and has been the focus of many structure determination efforts. This paper studies the conformations of loops in the S protein based on the available Protein Data Bank (PDB) structures. Lo
Preliminary epidemiologic, phylogenetic and clinical findings suggest that several novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants have increased transmissibility and decreased efficacy of several existing vaccines. Four m