{"doi":"10.1101/2023.05.07.539752","title":"Dimeric Transmembrane Structure of the SARS-CoV-2 E Protein","abstract":"The SARS-CoV-2 E protein is a transmembrane (TM) protein with its N-terminus exposed on the external surface of the virus. Here, the TM structure of the E protein is characterized by oriented sample and magic angle spinning solid-state NMR in lipid bilayers and refined by molecular dynamics simulations. This protein has been found to be a pentamer, with a hydrophobic pore that appears to function as an ion channel. We identified only a symmetric helix-helix interface, leading to a dimeric structure that does not support channel activity. The two helices have a tilt angle of only 6°, resulting in an extended interface dominated by Leu and Val sidechains. While residues Val14-Thr35 are almost all buried in the hydrophobic region of the membrane, Asn15 lines a water-filled pocket that potentially serves as a drug-binding site. The E and other viral proteins may adopt different oligomeric states to help perform multiple functions.","journal":"bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)","year":2023,"id":396355,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"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":0.9451,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1084679,"name":"Huajun Qin","orcid":"0000-0002-6894-3967","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":417368,"name":"Ramesh Prasad","orcid":"0000-0001-9184-779X","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":540932,"name":"Riqiang Fu","orcid":"0000-0003-0075-0410","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307873,"name":"Huan‐Xiang Zhou","orcid":"0000-0001-9020-0302","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":483412,"name":"Timothy A. Cross","orcid":"0000-0002-9413-0505","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":420394,"name":"Rongfu Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-1387-7376","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":52,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:19:31.472087Z","pmid":"37214926","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":[]}