Structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain bound to the ACE2 receptor
Jun Lan, Jiwan Ge, Jinfang Yu, Sisi Shan, Huan Zhou, Shilong Fan, Qi Zhang, Xuanling Shi, Qisheng Wang, Linqi Zhang & Xinquan Wang
Nature (2020)
Abstract
A novel and highly pathogenic coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) has caused an outbreak in Wuhan city, Hubei province of China since December 2019, and soon spread nationwide and spilled over to other countries around the world1–3. To better understand the initial step of infection at an atomic level, we determined the crystal structure of the SARS-CoV-2 spike receptor-binding domain (RBD) bound to the cell receptor ACE2 at 2.45 Å resolution. The overall ACE2-binding mode of the SARS-CoV-2 RBD is nearly identical to that of the SARS-CoV RBD, which also utilizes ACE2 as the cell receptor4. Structural analysis identified residues in the SARS-CoV-2 RBD that are critical for ACE2 binding, the majority of which either are highly conserved or share similar side chain properties with those in the SARS-CoV RBD.
