8vci

Publication Abstract from PubMed

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) frameshift stimulatory element (FSE) is necessary for programmed -1 ribosomal frameshifting (-1 PRF) and optimized viral efficacy. The FSE has an abundance of context-dependent alternate conformations, but two of the structures most crucial to -1 PRF are an attenuator hairpin and a three-stem H-type pseudoknot structure. A crystal structure of the pseudoknot alone features three RNA stems in a helically stacked linear structure, whereas a 6.9 A cryo-EM structure including the upstream heptameric slippery site resulted in a bend between two stems. Our previous research alluded to an extended upstream multibranch loop that includes both the attenuator hairpin and the slippery site-a conformation not previously modeled. We aim to provide further context to the SARS-CoV-2 FSE via computational and medium resolution cryo-EM approaches, by presenting a 6.1 A cryo-EM structure featuring a linear pseudoknot structure and a dynamic upstream multibranch loop.

Structure of the SARS-CoV-2 Frameshift Stimulatory Element with an Upstream Multibranch Loop.,Peterson JM, Becker ST, O'Leary CA, Juneja P, Yang Y, Moss WN Biochemistry. 2024 May 21;63(10):1287-1296. doi: 10.1021/acs.biochem.3c00716. , Epub 2024 May 10. PMID:38727003^[1]

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.