Fig. 3.

The life cycle of SARS-CoV-2 and potential targets of plant-derived small molecule inhibitors (A-B) SARS-CoV- 2 spike protein binding to ACE2 followed by internalization of the virus (C) uncoating of the viral genome and its release into the cytoplasm (D-E) translation of replicase proteins (ORF1a/ab) followed by proteolysis (F–K) Replication/transcription of the viral genome. Incoming positive-strand genome generates full-length negative-strand RNA and sub-genomic RNA (sgRNAs). sgRNA translation results in both structural proteins and accessory proteins. (L–P) Structural proteins S (spike), M (membrane), E (envelope), and viral nucleocapsid complex get inserted into the ER-Golgi intermediate compartment (ERGIC) for virion assembly and release. Plant-based inhibitors (highlighted in yellow boxes) can target the majority of these steps as marked in red. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.) (adapted from de Vries 2020 [117] with some modifications)