Homology Models of the Papain-Like Protease PLpro from Coronavirus 2019-nCoV

The December 2019 outbreak of pneumonia in Wuhan, Hubei Province of China was rapidly linked to a novel coronavirus 2019-nCoV. The rapid spread and severity of the virus has led the World Health Organization to declare it a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. We recently described the first homology models of the main 3CL protease from 2019-nCoV, and now present models of the other viral protease, the papain-like protease or PLpro. Whilst the overall viral genome is most closely associated with bat coronaviruses, no bat PLpro crystal structures are known. Wuhan 2019-nCoV PLpro is most closely related to a bat coronavirus PLpro (97% identity), then SARS (80 %) and MERS (29%) and the most promising models presented here are prepared from SARS crystal structure templates.