Effect of natural mutations of SARS-CoV-2 on spike structure, conformation, and antigenicity

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Abstract

As battles to contain the COVID-19 pandemic continue, attention is focused on emerging variants of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus that have been deemed variants of concern because they are resistant to antibodies elicited by infection or vaccination or they increase transmissibility or disease severity. Three papers used functional and structural studies to explore how mutations in the viral spike protein affect its ability to infect host cells and to evade host immunity. Gobeil et al . looked at a variant spike protein involved in transmission between minks and humans, as well as the B1.1.7 (alpha), B.1.351 (beta), and P1 (gamma) spike variants; Cai et al . focused on the alpha and beta variants; and McCallum et al . discuss the properties of the spike protein from the B1.1.427/B.1.429 (epsilon) variant. Together, these papers show a balance among mutations that enhance stability, those that increase binding to the human receptor ACE2, and those that confer resistance to neutralizing antibodies. —VV

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.11.435037: (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 found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).


    Results from JetFighter: Please consider improving the rainbow (“jet”) colormap(s) used on page 45. 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.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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