Glycosylation in SARS-CoV-2 variants: A path to infection and recovery.

Glycan is an essential molecule that controls and drives life in a precise direction. The paucity of research in glycobiology may impede the significance of its role in the pandemic guidelines. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein is heavily glycosylated, with 22 putative N-glycosylation sites and 17 potential O-glycosylation sites discovered thus far. It is the anchor point to the host cell ACE2 receptor, TMPRSS2, and many other host proteins that can be recognized by their immune system; hence, glycosylation is considered the primary target of vaccine development. Therefore, it is essential to know how this surface glycan plays a role in viral entry, infection, transmission, antigen, antibody responses, and disease progression. Although the vaccines are developed and applied against COVID-19, the proficiency of the immunizations is not accomplished with the current mutant variations. The role of glycosylation in SARS-CoV-2 and its receptor ACE2 with respect to other putative cell glycan receptors and the significance of glycan in host cell immunity in COVID-19 are discussed in this paper. Hence, the molecular signature of the glycan in the coronavirus infection can be incorporated into the mainstream therapeutic process.

The Omic Insights on Unfolding Saga of COVID-19.

The year 2019 has seen an emergence of the novel coronavirus named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causing coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19). Since the onset of the pandemic, biological and interdisciplinary research is being carried out across the world at a rapid pace to beat the pandemic. There is an increased need to comprehensively understand various aspects of the virus from detection to treatment options including drugs and vaccines for effective global management of the disease. In this review, we summarize the salient findings pertaining to SARS-CoV-2 biology, including symptoms, hosts, epidemiology, SARS-CoV-2 genome, and its emerging variants, viral diagnostics, host-pathogen interactions, alternative antiviral strategies and application of machine learning heuristics and artificial intelligence for effective management of COVID-19 and future pandemics.

SARS-CoV-2 transgressing LncRNAs uncovers the known unknowns.

SARS-CoV-2 harbors many known unknown regions in the form of hypothetical open reading frames (ORFs). Although the mechanisms underlying the disease pathogenesis are not clearly understood, molecules such as long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a key regulatory role in the viral pathogenesis from endocytosis. We asked whether or not the lncRNAs in the host are associated with the viral proteins and argue that lncRNA-mRNAs molecules related to viral infection may regulate SARS-CoV-2 pathogenesis. Toward the end of the perspective, we provide challenges and insights into investigating these transgression pathways.

Molecular docking and dynamics studies of curcumin with COVID-19 proteins.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is caused by a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is a positive-strand RNA virus. The SARS-CoV-2 genome and its association to SAR-CoV-1 vary from ca. 66 to 96% depending on the type of betacoronavirideae family members. With several drugs, viz. chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin, artemisinin, remdesivir, azithromycin considered for clinical trials, there has been an inherent need to find distinctive antiviral mechanisms of these drugs. Curcumin, a natural bioactive molecule has been shown to have therapeutic potential for various diseases, and its effect on COVID-19 is also currently being explored. In this study, we show the binding potential of curcumin targeted to a variety of SARS-CoV-2 proteins, viz. spike glycoproteins (PDB ID: 6VYB), nucleocapsid phosphoprotein (PDB ID: 6VYO), spike protein-ACE2 (PDB ID: 6M17) along with nsp10 (PDB ID: 6W4H) and RNA dependent RNA polymerase (PDB ID: 6M71) structures. Furthermore, representative docking complexes were validated using molecular dynamics simulations and mechanistic studies at 100 ns was carried on nucleocapsid and nsp10 proteins with curcumin complexes which resulted in stable and efficient binding energies and correlated with that of docked binding energies of the complexes. Both the docking and simulation studies indicate that curcumin has the potential as an antiviral against COVID-19.