SARS-CoV-2 Nsp3 Antibody #88086

The cause of the COVID-19 pandemic is a novel and highly pathogenic coronavirus, termed SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2). SARS-CoV-2 is a member of the Coronaviridae family of viruses (1). The genome of SARS-CoV-2 is relatively large and encodes up to 29 open reading frames (ORFs). These include ORF1a and ORF1b (further processed into 16 non-structural proteins), 9 accessory proteins, and 4 canonical structural proteins: spike (S), envelope (E), membrane (M), and nucleocapsid (N) (2). Nsp3, also known as papain-like protease (PLpro), is the third protein to be translated from the viral RNA by the eukaryotic translational machinery. In a sequence of processing events, Nsp3 is cleaved from pp1a and pp1ab polyproteins, and works to also release 3C-like protease, a cysteine-like protease that performs subsequent polyprotein cleavage events that give rise to the components of the viral replicase complex (3). Both proteases are targets of interest for pharmaceutical anti-viral therapy (4,5).