A team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories has performed the first room-temperature X-ray measurements on the SARS-CoV-2 main protease — the enzyme that enables the virus to reproduce.

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The X-ray measurements mark an important first step in the researchers’ ultimate goal of building a comprehensive 3D model of the enzymatic protein. The model will be used to advance supercomputing simulations aimed at finding drug inhibitors to block the virus’s replication mechanism and help end the COVID-19 pandemic. Their research results are publicly available and have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

SARS-CoV-2 is the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. The virus reproduces by expressing long chains of proteins that must be cut into smaller lengths by the protease enzyme.