D. Kneller, Gwyndalyn Phillips, Hugh M. O’Neill, R. Jedrzejczak, L. Stols, P. Langan, A. Joachimiak, L. Coates, A. Kovalevsky
Nature Communications, 2020
The COVID-19 disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has become a pandemic health crisis. An attractive target for antiviral inhibitors is the main protease 3CL Mpro due to its essential role in processing the polyproteins translated from viral RNA. Here we report the room temperature X-ray structure of unliganded SARS-CoV-2 3CL Mpro, revealing the ligand-free structure of the active site and the conformation of the catalytic site cavity at near-physiological temperature. Comparison with previously reported low-temperature ligand-free and inhibitor-bound structures suggest that the room temperature structure may provide more relevant information at physiological temperatures for aiding in molecular docking studies. The SARS-CoV-2 3CL main protease (3CL Mpro) is a chymotrypsin-like protease that facilitates the production of non-structural proteins, which are essential for viral replication and is therefore of great interest as a drug target. Here, the authors present the 2.30 Å room temperature crystal structure of ligand-free 3CL Mpro and compare it with the earlier determined low-temperature ligand-free and inhibitor-bound crystal structures.
Cited by 55 publications.
Field of study: Medicine