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The sprint to solve coronavirus protein structures — and disarm them with drugs

Stopping the pandemic could rely on breakneck efforts to visualize SARS-CoV-2 proteins and use them to design drugs and vaccines.
  1. Megan Scudellari

    1. Megan Scudellari is a science journalist in Boston, Massachusetts.

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3D visualisation of the full exterior of SARS-CoV-2 virus within atmospheric space

Lying in bed on the night of 10 January, scrolling through news on his smartphone, Andrew Mesecar got an alert. He sat up. It was here. The complete genome of a coronavirus causing a cluster of pneumonia-like cases in Wuhan, China, had just been posted online.

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Nature 581, 252-255 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01444-z

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 19 May 2020: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong location for Karla Satchell.

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