The Chinese Academy of Sciences Gao Fu/Shi A team of Nature published a paper that for the first time analyzed the structure of Ebola virus polymerase

Ebola is one
of the deadliest viruses in the world.
Ebola virus polymerase is responsible for viral genome replication and is highly conserved, making it an important target for
the development of broad-spectrum drugs.
However, due to the large molecular weight, instability, easy degradation and other reasons, the resolution of the three-dimensional structure of Ebola virus polymerase has always been a worldwide problem, which has seriously limited the drug development
of targeted polymerase.

Gao Fu/Shi Yi's team of the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences first resolved the structure of Ebola virus polymerase, elucidated the molecular mechanism of its synthesis of progeny RNA, and clarified the dynamic changes of non-segmented negative stranded RNA viruses during transcription and replication from the starting state to the extended state, laying a key theoretical foundation for understanding the replication mechanism of Ebola virus at the molecular level.
At the same time, the work found that the drug Suramine can effectively inhibit the activity of Ebola virus polymerase by inhibiting NTP substrates into the enzyme activity center, which not only provides a candidate treatment plan for the prevention and control of Ebola epidemic, but also provides a new target and direction
for the development of anti-Ebola virus drugs.

The results were published
in the journal Nature on September 28, 2022.
Yuan Bin, a doctoral student at the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and researcher Peng Qi are co-first authors of this paper, and postdoctoral researcher Cheng Jinlong and researcher Wang Min also participated in the study
.
Shi Yi and Academician Gao Fu are researchers at the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as co-corresponding authors of
this paper.
The work was also strongly supported
by Qi Jianxun, a researcher at the Institute of Microbiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhong Jin, a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Pasteur.
The research has been supported
by the National Key R&D Program, the Strategic Pilot Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

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