Multipurpose antibody database joins the fight against covid
- November 14, 2022
- Posted by: OptimizeIAS Team
- Category: DPN Topics
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Multipurpose antibody database joins the fight against covid
Subject :Science and Technology
Context-
- Since the outbreak of Covid-19, a number of databases on coronaviruses have been created. However, there is none as yet that provides useful information such as the binding affinity (how tightly an antibody binds to the virus) and how coronavirus antibodies effectively kill the viruses.
About the CoV-AbDab database-
- A group of scientists from IIT Madras have collected Information related to binding affinity and inhibitory concentration of neutralising antibodies.
- Also, the amino acid sequence information of all coronavirus-related antibodies was included in a sequence database called CoV-AbDab.
- The result was the creation of Ab-CoV, a database of 1,780 coronavirus-related antibodies, including 211 nanobodies.
- The database additionally gives information about each antibody, such as how the antibody was obtained, which strain of virus it binds to and which part of the spike-protein (epitope) does it bind to.
About Ab-CoV-
- Ab-CoV is a database of 1,780 coronavirus-related antibodies, including 211 nanobodies.
- Ab-CoV has a wide range of search and display options.
- Users can directly search and download based on antibody name, viral protein epitope, neutralised viral strain, antibody, nanobody, etc.
- It also has the option to view the structures of antibodies or viral proteins as a 3D model.
- The Ab-CoV database will be a vital resource for coronaviruses-related studies.
- It also has the potential to assist researchers in antibody engineering, analysing immune escape for known and future variants of SARS-CoV-2, computational studies of neutralising antibodies, to relate structural features with binding affinity specific to SARS-CoV-2, and for the design of therapeutic interventions.
- Some data has already been used to understand the relationship between structural features and binding affinities of spike protein-antibody complexes as well as antibody repurposing.