Biomolecular NMR Assignments (2020) published online
1H, 13C, and 15N backbone chemical shift assignments of the C-terminal dimerization domain of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid protein
S. M. Korn, R. Lambertz, B. Fürtig, M. Hengesbach, F. Löhr, C. Richter, H. Schwalbe, J. E. Weigand, J. Wöhnert, A. SchlundtThe current outbreak of the highly infectious COVID-19 respiratory disease is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2). To fight the pandemic, the search for promising viral drug targets has become a cross-border common goal of the international biomedical research community. Within the international Covid19-NMR consortium, scientists support drug development against SARS-CoV-2 by providing publicly available NMR data on viral proteins and RNAs. The coronavirus nucleocapsid protein (N protein) is an RNA-binding protein involved in viral transcription and replication. Its primary function is the packaging of the viral RNA genome. The highly conserved architecture of the coronavirus N protein consists of an N-terminal RNA-binding domain (NTD), followed by an intrinsically disordered Serine/Arginine (SR)-rich linker and a C-terminal dimerization domain (CTD). Besides its involvement in oligomerization, the CTD of the N protein (N-CTD) is also able to bind to nucleic acids by itself, independent of the NTD. Here, we report the near-complete NMR backbone chemical shift assignments of the SARS-CoV-2 N-CTD to provide the basis for downstream applications, in particular site-resolved drug binding studies.