Although the COVID-19 pandemic was the first time most of humanity learned of the now infamous disease, the family of coronaviruses was first identified in the mid-1960s.
In a new study, molecular biologist Steven Van Doren, a scientist in the University of Missouri College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, has uncovered unexpected actions of a key player in how the coronavirus infects its target -; a discovery that could guide further vaccine development.
Funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, Van Doren and his team studied the fusion peptide, an important feature of the spike protein that serves to bind the virus with the human cell, an essential step in the course of infection. In this study, they found that the fusion peptide plays a more invasive role in fusing the virus to the cell than previously thought, which is significant in understanding how infection occurs.
The fusion peptide is the most preserved part of the whole viral spike. Throughout the evolution of this virus, the fusion peptide endured despite all the mutations and variants that we kept on hearing about in the news. The fusion peptide never changed much and stayed a constant feature on the virus spike because it’s too critically important for infection for it to be modified.”
Van Doren, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Missouri-Columbia
The fusion