{"doi":"10.1116/6.0000743","title":"Effect of ambient temperature on respiratory tract cells exposed to SARS-CoV-2 viral mimicking nanospheres—An experimental study","abstract":"The novel coronavirus caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has reached more than 160 countries and has been declared a pandemic. SARS-CoV-2 infects host cells by binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) surface receptor via the spike (S) receptor-binding protein (RBD) on the virus envelope. Global data on a similar infectious disease spread by SARS-CoV-1 in 2002 indicated improved stability of the virus at lower temperatures facilitating its high transmission in the community during colder months (December-February). Seasonal viral transmissions are strongly modulated by temperatures, which can impact viral trafficking into host cells; however, an experimental study of temperature-dependent activity of SARS-CoV-2 is still lacking. We mimicked SARS-CoV-2 with polymer beads coated with the SARS-CoV-2 S protein to study the effect of seasonal temperatures on the binding of virus-mimicking nanospheres to lung epithelia. The presence of the S protein RBD on nanosphere surfaces led to binding by Calu-3 airway epithelial cells via the ACE-2 receptor. Calu-3 and control fibroblast cells with S-RBD-coated nanospheres were incubated at 33 and 37 °C to mimic temperature fluctuations in the host respiratory tract, and we found no temperature dependence in contrast to nonspecific binding of bovine serum ablumin-coated nanospheres. Moreover, the ambient temperature changes from 4 to 40 °C had no effect on S-RBD-ACE-2 ligand-receptor binding and minimal effect on the S-RBD protein structure (up to 40 °C), though protein denaturing occurred at 51 °C. Our results suggest that ambient temperatures from 4 to 40 °C have little effect on the SARS-CoV-2-ACE-2 interaction in agreement with the infection data currently reported.","journal":"Biointerphases","year":2021,"id":202110,"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":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9495,"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":781613,"name":"Alexandra Paul","orcid":"0000-0002-8368-9880","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":660665,"name":"Sayantan Chatterjee","orcid":"0000-0003-3791-3463","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":782167,"name":"Sabine Pütz","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":782168,"name":"Natasha Nehra","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":525479,"name":"Daniel Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-1701-739X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781614,"name":"Arsalan Nisar","orcid":"0000-0001-9450-002X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":781615,"name":"Christian M. Jennings","orcid":"0000-0003-4966-1582","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":140050,"name":"Sapun H. Parekh","orcid":"0000-0001-8522-1854","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":575844,"name":"Sachin Kumar","orcid":"0000-0002-1898-1578","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":64,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:51:05.955461Z","pmid":"33706521","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":[]}