Currently, little is known about the molecular interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and its host. In this preprint, Gordon et al. cloned, tagged and expressed 26 of 29 SARS-CoV-2 proteins individually in HEK293T cells and used mass spectrometry to measure protein–protein interactions. They identified 332 interactions between viral and host proteins, and several viral proteins (including N, nsp9, nsp13, nsp15, ORF3a and ORF6) were found to directly target cellular proteins involved in innate immune signalling. Furthermore, they noted 69 existing drugs known to target host proteins or associated pathways that interact with SARS-CoV-2. Overall, this ‘SARS-CoV-2 interaction map’ paves the way to better understand how the virus hijacks its host during infection and provides promising therapeutic candidates.
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests
References
Original article
- Gordon DE, et al. A SARS-CoV-2-human protein-protein interaction map reveals drug targets and potential drug-repurposing. bioRxiv. 2020 doi: 10.1101/2020.03.22.002386. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]