Researchers have shown that the novel coronavirus hijacks proteins in its target cells, potentially causing them to form long, arm-like extensions to reach nearby cells and advance the infection, afinding that has led to the identification of clinically approved drugs that may disrupt the process.
The scientists, including those from EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), and the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) in the US, noted that viruses, including the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, take control of the machinery of host cells and manipulate it to produce new viral particles.
They said sometimes this hijacking interferes with the activity of the host’s proteins and other important molecules such as enzymes, which change protein activity by making chemical modifications to its structure. In the study, published on Sunday in the journal Cell, the scientists analysed all host and viral proteins that showed changes in an enzymatic process called phosphorylation after SARS-CoV-2 infection.