The key to understanding Corona: The virus needs only a single door opener

Why is the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus able to spread so efficiently? Various hypotheses are still circulating in the scientific community. A group of researchers from Würzburg has now found groundbreaking answers. In Europe, the pandemic triggered in 2020 by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is now largely under control. But why this virus is able to spread so efficiently remains unclear. A team of researchers led by Dr. Simone Backes, Dr. Gerti Beliu and Prof. Dr. Markus Sauer of the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg (JMU) has now shown in a publication in Angewandte Chemie that some previous assumptions need to be reconsidered. For example, the virus does not bind with several surface proteins simultaneously to several receptors of the cell to be infected. This assumption has previously been an attempt to explain how viruses increase their infectivity. Binding to a single receptor also does not lead to the subsequent docking of further receptors to...