Figure 1. Deletion of conserved S31 on the NTD introduces an N30 glycosylation site.

(A) Mutations (red) and a deletion (blue) in KP.3.1.1 in the context of JN.1 S (lavender) (PDB ID: 8Y5J)¹. (B) Sequence alignment of sarbecoviruses including several SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern (VoC). Yellow highlights the conserved S31 across sarbecoviruses except for KP.3.1.1. Red shows the N-glycosylation sequon at N30. Residues identical in all aligned sequences are labeled by an asterisk (*), whereas a colon (:) and a period (.) indicate strongly similar and less similar sequences, respectively. The sequence alignment was performed with Clustal Omega⁴⁸. (C) Frequencies of circulating variants JN.1, JN.1.11.1, KP.2, KP.2.3, KP.3, KP.3.1.1, and LB.1 sequences in the United States and worldwide from 05/04/2024 to 11/01/2024. Data were collected from covSPECTRUM¹³.