(A(i)) Electrostatic potential map (ESP) of 1-up spike without
glycans included for simple illustration. ESP is illustrated on a
range from −4 to +4 kT/e. The RBD supersite is highlighted
with an orange dashed line. (A(ii)) Rotated viewpoint of electrostatic
potential map of 1-up spike. Again, ESP is illustrated on a range
from −4 to +4 kT/e and the RBD HS supersite is highlighted
with an orange dashed line. (A(iii)) Close up view of spike RBD (surface
representation) and bound HEP octamer (hep8mer, licorice representation).
Both spike RBD and hep8mer are colored according to their corresponding
electrostatic potentials (ranging from −4 to +4 kT/e). (A(iv))
Close-ups of key interactions between hep8mer (licorice representation,
orange carbon atoms) and spike RBD (gray cartoon representation) facilitated
by R346, N354, K356, and R357. (B) Computational calculation of binding
energy of hep8mer to spike RBD over a range of implicit solvent ionic
strengths. (C) BLI results of HEP to spike in three different concentrations
of NaCl (10, 75, and 150 mM). (D) Response of the lateral flow test
in different ionic concentrations (10, 75, and 150 mM). (E) Screening
results of HS15, HEP15, HEP27, CS25, DEX5, and DEX50 using LFSA. p values <0.05 (*), 0.01 (**) and 0.001 (***) determined
using a one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s post hoc test.