Thread by @nanogenomic

@RTrumpsDaughter Okay, let's walk through basics.

1) here is a schematic of the viral spike protein (left), and a virus with many spike proteins on its surface (right).

@RTrumpsDaughter 2) here is a video of the spike protein (green big thing) at atomic resolution binding to ACE2 (red; green portions are binding portions), one of the viral entry receptors. ACE is also something that most likely is coating the virus and shielding it from the immune system.

@RTrumpsDaughter 3) here is a video comparing the "receptor binding domain" (RBD; the smaller, truncated fragment of the whole spike) to the entire spike protein, both in their bound conformations to ACE2.

you can buy the "RBD" — it is just a small chunk of the spike mybiosource.com/covid-19-recom…

@RTrumpsDaughter 4) here is a video of the antibody (magenta) that @FrancisCollins @NIHDirector wrote about in a blog post as a promising antibody against the virus — shown is the RBD in the same bound conformation to ACE2 as (3)

rcsb.org/structure/6m0j more details here:

https://twitter.com/nanogenomic/status/1251969427890827264?s=20

@RTrumpsDaughter @FrancisCollins @NIHDirector 5) here is a video of the whole spike protein overlaid on the receptor binding domain and the 6M0J antibody — note that the fully formed viral spike protein is bigger than the spike, and the antibody literally can't stick to the actual spike protein's surface...

@RTrumpsDaughter @FrancisCollins @NIHDirector 6) furthermore, approaches such as Moderna's, which make the whole spike protein—or even other approaches for making the entire spike—are likely to generate a lot of the wrong antibodies

@RTrumpsDaughter @FrancisCollins @NIHDirector 7) @Ligandal's approach is unique in that we mimic just the portion of the spike protein that binds to the ACE2 receptor; we make "peptide nanorobots" that are anticipated to "knock the virus off" the ACE2 receptors, boosting immunity and exposing the virus for the immune system

@RTrumpsDaughter @FrancisCollins @NIHDirector @Ligandal 8) this video does a good job of showing the scale of a virus vs. a cell, and what viral entry looks like from a perspective outside the cell — we are blocking the ability of the virus to "handshake" with the cell receptors, while also exposing it

youtube.com/watch?v=jkNxmT…