{"doi":"10.1126/science.abf2303","title":"Structural impact on SARS-CoV-2 spike protein by D614G substitution","abstract":"Substitution for aspartic acid (D) by glycine (G) at position 614 in the spike (S) protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) appears to facilitate rapid viral spread. The G614 strain and its recent variants are now the dominant circulating forms. Here, we report cryo-electron microscopy structures of a full-length G614 S trimer, which adopts three distinct prefusion conformations that differ primarily by the position of one receptor-binding domain. A loop disordered in the D614 S trimer wedges between domains within a protomer in the G614 spike. This added interaction appears to prevent premature dissociation of the G614 trimer-effectively increasing the number of functional spikes and enhancing infectivity-and to modulate structural rearrangements for membrane fusion. These findings extend our understanding of viral entry and suggest an improved immunogen for vaccine development.","journal":"Science","year":2021,"id":145363,"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":472,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.962,"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":106133,"name":"Yongfei Cai","orcid":"0000-0002-3628-3802","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106135,"name":"Tianshu Xiao","orcid":"0000-0003-1287-1228","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616099,"name":"Jianming Lu","orcid":"0009-0001-1692-7922","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106136,"name":"Hanqin Peng","orcid":"0000-0002-5357-8215","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106137,"name":"Sarah M. Sterling","orcid":"0000-0003-0017-0408","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106138,"name":"Richard M. Walsh","orcid":"0000-0002-8939-8988","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106140,"name":"Sophia Rits‐Volloch","orcid":"0000-0003-2910-1422","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616100,"name":"Haisun Zhu","orcid":"0000-0001-8395-9409","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":617339,"name":"Alec N. Woosley","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":616101,"name":"Wei Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-7634-6601","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311610,"name":"Piotr Sliz","orcid":"0000-0002-6522-0835","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106141,"name":"Bing Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-8625-1657","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":106134,"name":"Jun Zhang","orcid":"0000-0002-1289-0624","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":61,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:41:52.374756Z","pmid":"33727252","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":[]}