Setayesh Yazdani

Today’s post focuses on another protein encoded by many coronaviruses, the non-structural protein 15 (nsp15), an endoribonuclease. Nsp15 is a nidoviral RNA uridylate-specific endoribonuclease (NendoU) with C-terminal catalytic activity. This protein belongs to the EndoU family, and they all carry an RNA endonuclease activity to produce 2’-3’ cyclic phosphodiester and 5’-hydroxyl termini. (Kim et al. Read More …

Today’s post focuses on another protein encoded in open reading frame 1a (ORF1a) of many coronaviruses, the non-structural protein 9 (nsp9). Nsp9 is thought to mediate viral replication. In SARS-CoV-1, nsp9’s role has been highlighted as a single-stranded RNA-binding subunit. (Egloff et al., 2004) The structure of SARS-CoV-2 nsp9 was solved in both apo and Read More …

Hello and happy new year! I am back from my winter break and starting to get back to research. If you have followed my previous posts, you know that I have posted the druggability and genetic variability analysis of several protein targets of SARS-CoV-2. There are a few targets that I will be posting in Read More …

One of the important enzymes in the replication cycle of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is the helicase, which is also known as non-structural protein 13 (nsp13). During the viral life cycle, the holo-RNA-dependent RNA polymerase, also known as nsp12, is thought to coordinate with several additional factors, including the nsp13 helicase (Snijder et al., 2016; Sola Read More …

SARS-CoV-2 is a positive-strand RNA virus, depending on its multi-subunit machinery to replicate its RNA. This machinery is known as RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). The catalytic subunit of RdRp, which is the core component of this machinery, is called nsp12. Nsp12 has little catalytic activity on its own and relies on accessory subunits to have Read More …

In my previous post 19, I showed how we assessed the druggability of the remdesivir-binding site of SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) and determined the residues lining that site. In this post, we analyze the genetic diversity of RdRp catalytic site across Alpha- and Betacoronavirus entries from UniProt and among SARS-CoV-2 samples. In the context Read More …

Since we posted our analysis of genetic variation of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (MPro) with inhibitor N3 (PDB: 7bqy), there have been other inhibitors co-crystallized with the MPro (PDB: 6lze, PDB: 6m0k, and PDB: 6y2f). In my last post, I talked about the two inhibitors, 11a and 11b (PDB: 6lze, PDB: 6m0k) and in today’s post, Read More …