{"id":126554,"date":"2021-08-20T22:22:16","date_gmt":"2021-08-21T05:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/researchers-discover-hidden-sars-cov-2-gate-that-opens-to-allow-covid-infection"},"modified":"2021-08-20T22:22:16","modified_gmt":"2021-08-21T05:22:16","slug":"researchers-discover-hidden-sars-cov-2-gate-that-opens-to-allow-covid-infection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2021\/08\/researchers-discover-hidden-sars-cov-2-gate-that-opens-to-allow-covid-infection","title":{"rendered":"Researchers discover hidden SARS-CoV-2 \u2018gate\u2019 that opens to allow COVID infection"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-discover-hidden-sars-cov-2-gate-that-opens-to-allow-covid-infection.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Since the early days of the COVID pandemic, scientists have aggressively pursued the secrets of the mechanisms that allow severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to enter and infect healthy human cells.<\/p>\n<p>Early in the pandemic, University of California San Diego\u2019s Rommie Amaro, a computational biophysical chemist, helped develop a detailed visualization of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that efficiently latches onto our cell receptors.<\/p>\n<p>Now, Amaro and her research colleagues from UC San Diego, University of Pittsburgh, University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee have discovered how glycans\u2013molecules that make up a sugary residue around the edges of the spike protein\u2013act as infection gateways.<\/p>\n<p>Published August 19 in the journal Nature Chemistry, a research study led by Amaro, co-senior author Lillian Chong at the University of Pittsburgh, first author and UC San Diego graduate student Terra Sztain and co-first author and UC San Diego postdoctoral scholar Surl-Hee Ahn, describes the discovery of glycan \u201cgates\u201d that open to allow SARS-CoV-2 entry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Since the early days of the COVID pandemic, scientists have aggressively pursued the secrets of the mechanisms that allow severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) to enter and infect healthy human cells. Early in the pandemic, University of California San Diego\u2019s Rommie Amaro, a computational biophysical chemist, helped develop a detailed visualization of the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19,1523],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry","category-computing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126554\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}