The Hormel Institute publishes COVID-19 research to aid virus control

Dr. Bin Liu, Assistant Professor and leader of the Transcription and Gene Regulation lab at The Hormel Institute, published discoveries regarding SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. COVID-19 has infected approximately 200 million people and led to more than 4 million deaths worldwide.

The article “Structural basis of mismatch recognition by a SARS-CoV-2 proofreading enzyme” was published in Science (2021). It is a collaboration between Dr. Liu and Dr. Yang Yang at Iowa State University and Dr. Chang Liu at Yale University.

The study utilized cryo-electron microscopy (CryoEM), a Titan Krios considered one of the world’s most powerful electron microscopes, to study the structures of COVID-19 viral RNA proofreading machine (ExoN complex) to understand how ExoN is responsible for improving the fidelity of coronavirus RNA synthesis by removing mis-incorporated nucleotides, and how it recognizes and excises nucleotide analog inhibitors incorporated into the nascent RNA, undermining the effectiveness of first-line nucleotide analog-based antivirals. Dr. Liu plans to further study how SARS-CoV-2 replicates and transcribes RNA with the goal of developing improved anti-coronavirus therapies.