Fast-spreading variants of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, carry mutations that enable the virus to escape some of the immune response created naturally or by vaccination. A new study from scientists at Scripps Research, along with collaborators in Germany and the Netherlands, has revealed key details of how these escape mutations work.
The scientists, whose study appears in Science, used structural biology techniques to map at high resolution how important classes of neutralizing antibodies bind to the original pandemic strain of SARS-CoV-2 — and how the process is disrupted by mutations found in new variants first detected in Brazil, the United Kingdom, South Africa and India.
