Recent Advances on the Structure, Genomic Arrangement, Life Cycle, and Virus-Host Proteins Interactome of SARS CoV-2

Novel coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) is a highly contagious disease that has been recorded as a third global pandemic caused by the coronavirus (CoV) family in the past twenty years in the aftermath of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS). COVID 19 is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) that is transmitted by person-to-person transmission and it remains asymptomatic or presented with mild flu-like symptoms in most occasions, while in some instances, it may progress to severe life threatening and potentially fatal illnesses. This disease is now imposing immense negative influences across the world due to the highly contagious nature of the disease as well as due to the absence of effective treatment targeting the disease. This review addresses the recent advances on the structure and genomic arrangement of SARS-CoV-2 as well as the viral entry, replication and virus-host protein interactome that potentially contribute to cell infectivity, immune evasion, and viral spread. Unveiling the details of such aspects of SARS-CoV-2, therefore, possibly has paramount importance for discovering therapeutic targets.

Interactome of vertebrate GAF/ThPOK reveals its diverse functions in gene regulation and DNA repair

GAGA associated factor (GAF) is a sequence-specific DNA binding transcription factor that is evolutionarilyconserved from flies to humans. Emerging evidence shows a context-dependent function of vertebrate GAF(vGAF, a.k.a. ThPOK) in multiple processes like gene activation, repression, and enhancer-blocking. Wehypothesize that context-dependent interaction of vGAF with a diverse set of proteins forms the basis for themultifunctional nature of vGAF. To this end, we deciphered the protein–protein interactome of vGAF andshow that vGAF interacts with chromatin remodelers, RNA metabolic machinery, transcriptional activators/repressors, and components of DNA repair machinery. We further validated the biological significance of ourprotein–protein interaction data with functional studies and established a novel role of vGAF in DNA repairand cell-survival after UV-induced DNA damage. One of the major risk factors for skin cutaneous melanoma isprolonged exposure of UV and subsequent DNA damage. vGAF is highly expressed in normal skin tissue.Interestingly, our analysis of high-throughput RNA-sequencing data shows that vGAF is heavily downregulated across all major stages of skin cutaneous melanoma suggesting its potential as a diagnostic biomarker.Taken together, our study provides a plausible explanation for the diverse gene regulatory functions of vGAFand unravels its novel role in DNA repair.

Identification of neprilysin as a potential target of arteannuin using computational drug repositioning

ABSTRACT The discovery of arteannuin (qinghaosu) in the 20th Century was a major advance for medicine. Besides functioning as a malaria therapy, arteannuin is a pharmacological agent in a range of other diseases, but its mechanism of action remains obscure. In this study, the reverse docking server PharmMapper was used to identify potential targets of arteannuin. The results were checked using the chemical-protein interactome servers DRAR-CPI and DDI-CPI, and verified by AutoDock Vina. The results showed that neprilysin (also known as CD10), a common acute lymphoblastic leukaemia antigen, was the top disease-related target of arteannuin. The chemical-protein interactome and docking results agreed with those of PharmMapper, further implicating neprilysin as a potential target. Although experimental verification is required, this study provides guidance for future pharmacological investigations into novel clinical applications for arteannuin.

LARGE-SCALE YEAST TWO-HYBRID SYSTEM IN THE APPLICATION ON MAP OF PROTEOME INTERACTOME / 微生物学通报

Protein fulfilling the their roles, one of important ways is through protein-protein interaction. In functional genomic era, identifying all of protein-protein interaction in proteome and mapping the protein interactions that have been attracting many scientists' attention , of which large-scale yeast two-hybrid system is one strategy of most widely used. In recent two years, ambitious projects have launched to examine all of the protein-protein interaction in Saccharomyces cer-evisiae using large-scale yeast two-hybrid system. Nevertheless, huge protein network is larger than that we predict and single yeast two-hybrid system cannot solve all the problems, which need be complemented by other wags.