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Review
. 2024 Feb;1866(2):184259.
doi: 10.1016/j.bbamem.2023.184259. Epub 2023 Dec 5.

Multimerization of the heptad repeat regions of the SARS-CoV 2 spike protein

Christopher Aisenbrey  1 , Burkhard Bechinger  2
Affiliations
Review

Multimerization of the heptad repeat regions of the SARS-CoV 2 spike protein

Christopher Aisenbrey et al. Biochim Biophys Acta Biomembr. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

The heptad repeat 1 and 2 (HR1, HR2) regions in the spike protein of SARS-CoV 2 play a key role in the fusogenic mechanism of the virus with the host cell. During the fusion process they are thought to rearrange into an interdomain multimer. Functional fragments of the heptad repeat 1 and 2 regions in the spike protein of SARS-CoV 2 were chemically synthesized, labeled with nitrofurazone (NBD) and their interactions investigated by fluorescence spectroscopy. Steady state emission, fluorescence quenching, anisotropy and lifetime measurements in combination with a fluorophore dilution scheme were used to dissect multimer formation of HR1 and HR2 in quantitative detail. In addition, the investigation of the multimers by homo-FRET (via anisotropy) and lifetime measurements reveals new insights into the mechanism of fluorophore-fluorophore interactions in biological samples.

Keywords: Fluorescence exciton; Fluorescence self-quenching; Homo-FRET; SARS-CoV 2; Spike protein s2.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Burkhard Bechinger is executive editor of BBA Biomembranes.

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