The outbreak and spread of SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus 2), the cause of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), is a current global health emergency and a prophylactic vaccine is needed urgently. The spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 mediates entry into host cells, and thus is a target for neutralizing antibodies and vaccine design. Here we show that adjuvanted protein…

Genetic similarity is a measure for the genetic relatedness among individuals. The standard method for computing similarity matrices involves the inner product of observed genetic variant matrices. Such an approach is inaccurate or impossible if genotypes are not available, or not densely sampled, or of poor quality (for example, genetic analysis of extinct species). We provide a new method for…

Extracting insight from population genetic data often demands computationally intensive modeling. dadi is a popular program for fitting models of demographic history and natural selection to such data. Here, I show that running dadi on a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) can speed computation by orders of magnitude compared to the CPU implementation, with minimal user burden. This speed increase…

In plants, large numbers of R genes, which segregate as loci with alternative alleles conferring different resistance to pathogens, have been maintained over a long evolutionary time. In theory, there seem to be no reason for hosts to harbor these susceptible alleles in view of their null contribution to resistance. As such, why should populations support disease-susceptible individuals along…

The superfamily-1 helicase non-structural protein 13 (nsp13) is required for SARS-CoV-2 replication, making it an important antiviral therapeutic target. The mechanism and regulation of nsp13 has not been explored at the single-molecule level. Specifically, force-dependent unwinding experiments have yet to be performed for any coronavirus helicase. Here, using optical tweezers, we find that nsp13…

Membrane curvature has emerged as an intriguing physical organization principle underlying biological signaling and membrane trafficking. FBP17 of the CIP4/FBP17/Toca-1 F-BAR family is unique in the BAR family because its structurally folded F-BAR domain does not contain any hydrophobic motifs that insert into lipid bilayer. While it has been widely assumed so, whether the banana-shaped F-BAR…