In this breakthrough study, the research groups in Bristol’s Faculty of Life Sciences, Professor Peter Cullen from the School of Biochemistry; Dr Yohei Yamauchi, Associate Professor and virologist from the School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, and Dr Boris Simonetti, a senior researcher in the Cullen lab, used multiple approaches to discover that SARS-CoV-2 recognises a protein called neuropilin-1 on the surface of human cells to facilitate viral infection.
Neuropilin-1 is a host factor for SARS-CoV-2 infection
James L. Daly, Boris Simonetti, Katja Klein, Kai-En Chen, Maia Kavanagh Williamson, Carlos Antón-Plágaro, Deborah K. Shoemark, Lorena Simón-Gracia, Michael Bauer, Reka Hollandi, Urs F. Greber, Peter Horvath, Richard B. Sessions, Ari Helenius, Julian A. Hiscox, Tambet Teesalu, David A. Matthews, Andrew D. Davidson, Brett M. Collins, Peter J. Cullen1, Yohei Yamauchi
Science 20 Oct 2020: DOI: 10.1126/science.abd3072
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/10/19/science.abd3072