Security News > 2020 > March > Your unused computer could help find a COVID-19 cure

Since February, the community has been working on the computationally heavy work of figuring out how the virus's proteins bind to cells.

Infection in both COVID-19 and its close cousin, the SARS coronavirus, first happens in the lungs when a protein on the surface of the virus binds to a receptor protein on a lung cell.

One way to stop the infection is to block the spike protein from binding to the receptor cell.

One such therapeutic antibody has already been developed for SARS-CoV, but in order to develop something similar for COVID-19, scientists need to better understand the structure of the virus's spike protein and how it binds to the human ACE2 receptor to gain viral entry into human cells.

Usually, your computer will never be idle, but we've had such an enthusiastic response to our COVID-19 work that you will see some intermittent downtime as we sprint to setup more simulations.

News URL

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2020/03/25/your-unused-computer-can-help-find-a-covid-19-cure/