PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Love Panchariya
AU  - Wajahat Ali Khan
AU  - Shobhan Kuila
AU  - Kirtishila Sonkar
AU  - Sibasis Sahoo
AU  - Archita Ghoshal
AU  - Ankit Kumar
AU  - Dileep Kumar Verma
AU  - Abdul Hasan
AU  - Shubhashis Das
AU  - Jitendra K Thakur
AU  - Rajkumar Halder
AU  - Sujatha Sunil
AU  - Arulandu Arockiasamy
TI  - Zinc<sup>2+</sup> ion inhibits SARS-CoV-2 main protease and viral replication <em>in vitro</em>
AID  - 10.1101/2021.06.15.448551
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2021.06.15.448551
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/15/2021.06.15.448551.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/06/15/2021.06.15.448551.full
AB  - Zinc deficiency is linked to poor prognosis in COVID-19 patients while clinical trials with Zinc demonstrate better clinical outcome. The molecular target and mechanistic details of anti-coronaviral (SARS-CoV2) activity of Zinc remain obscure. We show that ionic Zinc not only inhibits SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) with nanomolar affinity, but also viral replication. We present the first crystal structure of Mpro-Zinc2+ complex at 1.9 Å and provide the structural basis of viral replication inhibition.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.