Deciphering the structure of the COVID-19 virus E protein bound to human PALS1 (IMAGE)
Caption
Deciphering the structure of the COVID-19 virus E protein bound to human PALS1: Starting with a motion-corrected cryo-EM micrograph of grainy nanometer-scale specks (a), image-processing and two-dimensional averaging produced low-resolution projections of the bound proteins from different orientations (b). Computational tools then transformed these 2-D images into a 3-D map (c). Blue indicates the highest-resolution, most stable parts, and red indicates lower-resolution parts with more flexibility. This map provides enough detail to fit the amino acid building blocks of the two proteins into a final structure of the complex (d), where different parts of PALS1 are shown in blue, green, and orange and the viral E protein is magenta.
Credit
Brookhaven National Laboratory
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