Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Using All-Atom Potentials to Refine RNA Structure Predictions of SARS-CoV-2 Stem Loops

Published

Author(s)

Christina Bergonzo, Andrea L. Szakal

Abstract

A considerable amount of rapid-paced research is underway to combat the SARS-CoV-2 11 pandemic. In this work, we assess the 3D structure of the 5' untranslated region of its RNA, in the 12 hopes that stable secondary structures can be targeted, interrupted, or otherwise measured. To this 13 end, we have combined molecular dynamics simulations with previous Nuclear Magnetic 14 Resonance measurements for stem loop 2 of SARS-CoV-1 to refine 3D structure predictions of that 15 stem loop. We find that relatively short sampling times allow for loop rearrangement from predicted 16 structures determined in absence of water or ions, to structures better aligned with experimental 17 data. We then use molecular dynamics to predict the refined structure of the TRS-L region which 18 includes stem loop 3, and show that arrangement of the loop around exchangeable monovalent 19 potassium can interpret the conformational equilibrium determined by in-cell DMS data.
Citation
International Journal of Molecular Sciences
Volume
21
Issue
17

Keywords

structure refinement, molecular dynamics, RNA stem loops, discontinuous transcription

Citation

Bergonzo, C. and Szakal, A. (2020), Using All-Atom Potentials to Refine RNA Structure Predictions of SARS-CoV-2 Stem Loops, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, [online], https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21176188 (Accessed March 29, 2024)
Created August 27, 2020, Updated March 23, 2022