Dr Kamilla Toon, Dr Michael Oliver & colleagues use AlphaFold to uncover a potentially novel fusion mechanism in the Hepaci-, Pegi- and Pestiviruses.

'Structures of the Hepaci-, Pegi- and Pestiviruses envelope proteins suggest a novel membrane fusion mechanism' has been published in PLOS Biology.

Read the paper here: https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002174

The membrane fusion mechanism for many enveloped viruses is unknown. Using machine learning such as AlphaFold, rather than traditional experimental approaches, allows rapid and accurate prediction of protein structures. The authors discovered that the E1 protein has a conserved and novel structure, suggesting a common and previously unknown fusion mechanism. This work will guide further experiments to understand this mechanism and may also help vaccine design for viruses such as #HepC. 💰

Thank you to our funders - Wellcome Trust, MRC and Royal Society. 📱

Follow our researchers on Twitter: @GroveLab, @KamillaToon, @cb99_lewis, @sdevlinbio, @Paleovirologist