Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg and their collaborators at the Max Planck Bristol Center for Minimal Biology at the University of Bristol have developed a new approach to study Sars-CoV-2. For systematic and standardized research of Sars-CoV-2 they built minimalistic synthetic virus particles where they can incorporate distinct structures of the Sars-CoV-2 virus like the spike protein. This allowed scientists to study single molecular mechanisms in a controlled setting, which they can further manipulate and tune. Using this technique to study the spike protein, which has been shown to be critical for virus-host interaction and infection, they discovered a switching mechanism. Upon binding of inflammatory fatty acids, the spike protein changes its conformation, thereby becoming less “visible” to the hosts immune system.
The Sars-CoV-2 pandemic…
