Differential Antibody Recognition by Novel SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV Spike Protein Receptor Binding Domains: Mechanistic Insights and Implications for the Design of Diagnostics and Therapeutics

Ilda D’Annessa; Filippo Marchetti; Giorgio Colombo

The structures were used as input for epitope prediction using the Matrix of Local Coupling Energies method (MLCE), which combines the analysis of structural determinants of a given protein with its energetic properties [3] [4] . This approach allows to identify nonoptimized, low-intensity energetic interaction-networks, corresponding to those substructures that can be more prone to establish interactions with Antibodies, and be suitably recognized by binding partners. Briefly, the contiguous where * is the a-th eigenvalue and % * is the i-th component of the corresponding eigenvector. The eigenvector with the most negative correspondent eigenvalue contains most of the interaction information for the stabilizing interaction of the system. An approximated interaction matrix / %& is thus given by