Fig. 3: Effects of glycan shielding and conformational masking on the accessibility of different parts of the spike to potential therapeutics.
a, The probability that a residue is exposed to potential therapeutics (Pexposed), as determined from our structural ensemble. Red indicates a high probability of being exposed, and blue indicates a low probability of being exposed. b, Surface of the spike protein coloured by exposure probability. Exposed patches are circled in orange. Red residues have a higher probability of being exposed, whereas blue residues have a lower probability of being exposed. Atoms belonging to glycans are shown in green. c, Spike protein coloured by sequence conservation score. A conserved patch on the protein is circled in orange. Red residues have higher conservation, whereas blue residues have lower conservation. d, The difference in the probability that each residue is exposed between the ACE2-binding-competent conformations and the entire ensemble (ΔPexposed). Red residues have a higher probability of being exposed upon opening, whereas blue residues have a lower probability of being exposed. Exposure data can be found online at https://osf.io/fs2yv/ under the SARS-CoV-2 spike project in the analysis folder.
