Fig. 3.

Mechanism of remdesivir-mediated inhibition of coronavirus replication in host cells. The blue arrows and numbers represent the following essential viral infection steps: (1) attachment of the coronavirus particle to its specific receptor ACE2 and uncoating of the virus after adsorption into host cells; (2) establishment of replication organelles at the endoplasmic reticulum, where both genome replication and gene expression occur; (3) early translation of the incoming viral genome, which results in the generation of the RdRP; and (4) viral RNA replication. The purple wireframe and arrows represent the intracellular triphosphorylation of remdesivir and the competitive binding of NTP and ATP to RdRP to terminate viral RNA replication. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)