(1)H, (13)C, (15)N and (31)P chemical shift assignment for stem-loop 4 from the 5′-UTR of SARS-CoV-2

Vögele, Jennifer; Ferner, Jan-Peter; Altincekic, Nadide; Bains, Jasleen Kaur; Ceylan, Betül; Fürtig, Boris; Grün, J. Tassilo; Hengesbach, Martin; Hohmann, Katharina F.; Hymon, Daniel; Knezic, Bozana; Löhr, Frank; Peter, Stephen A.; Pyper, Dennis; Qureshi, Nusrat S.; Richter, Christian; Schlundt, Andreas; Schwalbe, Harald; Stirnal, Elke; Sudakov, Alexey; Wacker, Anna; Weigand, Julia E.; Wirmer-Bartoschek, Julia; Wöhnert, Jens; Duchardt-Ferner, Elke

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the cause of the respiratory disease COVID-19. As of today, therapeutic interventions in severe COVID-19 cases are still not available as no effective therapeutics have been developed so far. Despite the ongoing development of a number of effective vaccines, therapeutics to fight the disease once it has been contracted will still be required. Promising targets for the development of antiviral agents against SARS-CoV-2 can be found in the viral RNA genome. The 5′- and 3′-genomic ends of the 30 kb SCoV-2 genome are highly conserved among Betacoronaviruses and contain structured RNA elements involved in the translation and replication of the viral genome. The 40 nucleotides (nt) long highly conserved stem-loop 4 (5_SL4) is located within the 5′-untranslated region (5′-UTR) important for viral replication. 5_SL4 features an extended stem structure disrupted by several pyrimidine mismatches and is capped by a pentaloop. Here, we report extensive (1)H, (13)C, (15)N and (31)P resonance assignments of 5_SL4 as the basis for in-depth structural and ligand screening studies by solution NMR spectroscopy. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12104-021-10026-7.