Pramita Chowdhury*, Bijurica Chakraborty and Sanghamitra Sengupta
Department of Biochemistry, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India
*Corresponding Author: Pramita Chowdhury, Bijurica Chakraborty, Department of Biochemistry, University of Calcutta, Kolkata, West Bengal, India.
Received: September 14, 2020; Published: November , 2020
Increasing transmissibility and pathogenicity of SARS-CoV-2 has often been attributed to mutations accumulating in RNA genome of SARS-CoV-2 ancestral type originated in China. In this study, using in silico structural modeling and molecular docking, we demonstrate that observed low frequency non-synonymous amino acid alterations do not improve the efficacy of interaction between SARS-CoV-2 spike glycoprotein and host’s ACE2 receptor. The major spike haplotype detected corresponds to the ancestral Wuhan isolate which displays the most favorable interaction with ACE2. Although the sequences are different, length and number of predicted B-cell epitopes of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, identified using BepiPred 2.0, are comparable to that of SARS-CoV. However, the above data differ from the ones from HCoV-NL63. Analysis of population genetic parameters implies relaxed purifying selection to be predominant force shaping the genetic landscape of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, till date. These findings provide important clues in designing therapeutic strategies to contain the pandemic.
Keywords: SARS-CoV-2; Spike; ACE2; Epitopes; Purifying Selection
Citation: Pramita Chowdhury., et al. “In-depth Sequence Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein Repudiates Mutation Mediated Adaptive Selection in the Virus". Acta Scientific Microbiology 3.12 (2020): 16-23.
Copyright: © 2020 Pramita Chowdhury., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.