The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) represents a serious threat to the health of millions of people. Respiratory viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 can be transmitted via airborne and fomite routes. The latter requires virion adsorption at abiotic surfaces and most likely involves the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein subunit 1 (S1), which is the outermost point of its envelope. Understanding S1 spike protein interaction with fomite surfaces thus represents an important milestone on the road to fighting the spread of COVID-19.*
In the article “Adsorption of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein S1 at Oxide Surfaces Studied by High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy “ Yang Xin, Guido Grundmeier and Adrian Keller describe how high-speed atomic force microscopy (HS-AFM) is used to monitor the adsorption of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 at Al2O3(0001) and TiO2(100) surfaces in situ. *
NanoWorld Ultra-Short Cantilevers of the USC-F0.3-k0.3 AFM probe type were used for the high-speed atomic force microscopy. *
HS-AFM images (1 × 1 μm2) of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein S1 in 10 mM Tris (pH 7.5) adsorbed to a) an Al2O3(0001) and b) a TiO2(100) surface recorded at different time points as indicated. Height scales are 5 nm for the clean substrate surfaces at 0 s and 12 nm for the protein covered surfaces at later time points. Below the HS-AFM images, the corresponding height distribution functions are depicted. The vertical lines in the plots represent the height thresholds applied in the statistical analyses.
*Yang Xin, Guido Grundmeier, Adrian Keller
Adsorption of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein S1 at Oxide Surfaces Studied by High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy
Advanced NanoBioMed Research, Volume 1, Issue 2, February 2021, 2000024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/anbr.202000024
Open Access : The article “Adsorption of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein S1 at Oxide Surfaces Studied by High-Speed Atomic Force Microscopy” by Yang Xin, Guido Grundmeier and Adrian Keller is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
