Coupling of SARS-CoV-2 to Aβ Amyloid Fibrils

Francesco Coppola; Tomáš Pavlíček; Petr Král

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c08481

Coupling of SARS-CoV-2 to Aβ Amyloid Fibrils

ACS Omega. 2024 Feb 15;9(8):9295-9299. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c08481. eCollection 2024 Feb 27.

Authors

Francesco Coppola¹, Tomáš Pavlíček², Petr Král³

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, United States.
² Institute of Evolution, University of Haifa, Haifa 3498838, Israel.
³ Departments of Chemistry, Physics, Pharmaceutical Sciences, and Chemical Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60607, United States.

Abstract

The COVID-19 infection has been more problematic for individuals with certain health predispositions. Coronaviruses could also interfere with neural diseases if the viruses succeed in entering the brain. Therefore, it might be of principal interest to examine a possible coupling of coronaviruses and amyloid fibrils. Here, molecular dynamics simulations were used to investigate direct coupling of SARS-CoV-2 and Aβ fibrils, which play a central role in neural diseases. The simulations revealed several stable binding configurations and their dynamics of Aβ42 fibrils attached to spike proteins of the Omicron and Alpha variants of SARS-CoV-2.