February 4, 2020

Fast assessment of human receptor-binding capability of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV)

Category: Article Summary

Topic: Virology

• Huang and Herrman perform large-scale protein-protein docking experiments to quantify the interactions of 2019-nCoV S-protein receptor-binding domain (S-RBD) with human receptor ACE2 
• Sampling a large number of thermodynamically probable binding conformations with Monte Carlo algorithm, they established an experiment-based strength reference for evaluating the receptor-binding affinity of 2019-nCoV via comparison with SARS-CoV. 
• The binding affinity of 2019-nCoV S-RBD was about 73% of that of SARS-CoV
• This method might also be applied for rapidly assessing human transmission capability of other newly emerging CoV; and shows the utility of protein-protein interaction analyses

Huang Q and Herrman A (Feb 4, 2020). Fast assessment of human receptor-binding capability of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV). Pre-Print downloaded on 4 Feb, 2020 from, https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.02.01.930537v2