Binding strength and hydrogen bond numbers between Covid-19 RBD and HVR of antibody

This article has been Reviewed by the following groups

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Abstract

The global battle against the Covid-19 pandemic relies strongly on the human defence of antibody, which is assumed to bind the antigen’s Receptor Binding Domain with its Hypervariable Region. Due to the similarity to other viruses such as SARS, however, our understanding of the antibody-virus interaction has been largely limited to the genomic sequencing, which poses serious challenges to the containment, vaccine exploration and rapid serum testing. Based on the physical/chemical nature of the interaction, infrared spectroscopy was employed to reveal the binding disparity, when unusual temperature dependence was discovered from the 1550cm -1 absorption band, attributed to the hydrogen bonds by carboxyl/amino groups, binding the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and closely resembled SARS-CoV-2 or SARS-CoV-1 antibodies. The infrared absorption intensity, associated with the number of hydrogen bonds, was found to increase sharply between 27°C and 31°C, with the relative absorbance matches at 37°C the hydrogen bonding numbers of the two antibody types (19 vs 12). Meanwhile the ratio of bonds at 27°C, calculated by thermodynamic exponentials rather than by the layman’s guess, produces at least 5% inaccuracy. As a result, the specificity of the SARS-CoV-2 antibody will be more conclusive beyond 31°C, instead of at the usual room temperature of 20°C - 25°C, when the vaccine research and antibody diagnosis would likely be undermined. Beyond genomic sequencing, the temperature dependence, as well as the bond number match at 37°C between relative absorbance and the hydrogen bonding numbers of the two antibody types, are not only of clinical significance in particular, but also of a sample for the physical/chemical understanding of the vaccine-antibody interactions in general.

Article activity feed

  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2020.12.21.423787: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).


    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.


    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.


    Results from JetFighter: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on pages 16, 17, 18 and 15. At least one figure is not accessible to readers with colorblindness and/or is not true to the data, i.e. not perceptually uniform.


    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.