{"doi":"10.1101/2021.02.11.430757","title":"SARS CoV-2 nucleoprotein enhances the infectivity of lentiviral spike particles","abstract":"Abstract The establishment of SARS CoV-2 spike-pseudotyped lentiviral (LV) systems has enabled the rapid identification of entry inhibitors and neutralizing agents, alongside allowing for the study of this emerging pathogen in BSL-2 level facilities. While such frameworks recapitulate the cellular entry process in ACE2+ cells, they are largely unable to factor in supplemental contributions by other SARS CoV-2 genes. To address this, we performed an unbiased ORF screen and identified the nucleoprotein (N) as a potent enhancer of spike-pseudotyped LV particle infectivity. We further demonstrate that this augmentation by N renders LV spike particles less vulnerable to the neutralizing effects of a human IgG-Fc fused ACE2 microbody. Biochemical analysis revealed that the spike protein is better enriched in virions when the particles are produced in the presence of SARS CoV-2 nucleoprotein. Importantly, this improvement in infectivity is achieved without a concomitant increase in sensitivity towards RBD binding-based neutralization. Our results hold important implications for the design and interpretation of similar LV pseudotyping-based studies.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2021,"id":218438,"datarank":0.16479184330021646,"base_score":1.0986122886681096,"endowment":1.0986122886681096,"self_citation_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.16479184330021646,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9545,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":816218,"name":"M Sreepadmanabh","orcid":"0000-0003-3492-0203","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":580186,"name":"Pavitra Ramdas","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":816219,"name":"Amit Kumar Sahu","orcid":"0000-0002-2228-2104","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":501589,"name":"Atul Kumar","orcid":"0000-0003-3990-6531","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":316635,"name":"Ajit Chande","orcid":"0000-0003-2210-5180","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":811680,"name":"Tarun Mishra","orcid":"0000-0002-0968-5654","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":22,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:53:29.626149Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}