Fig. 5: Graph analysis of the interacting residues’ network.

a Cartoon representation of the complex (PDB id:6M0J) between SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (gray) and the human ACE2 receptor (green). Residue 501 of the spike protein is represented in red sticks, while a set of interacting residues of the ACE protein are identified in yellow sticks on the basis of a spatial distance threshold of 9 Å. The inset shows the average minimum distance of the ACE2 interacting residues with residue 501 of the spike protein for each variant. b Difference in Betweenness (left column) and Closeness (right column) centrality of each node of the SARS-CoV-2 spike found in interaction with ACE2 receptor between the seven studied spike variants and the WT one (see Table 1). c Hierarchical clustering of the seven spike variants together with the WT reference one (see Table 1).