Porcine deltacoronavirus (PDCoV) can experimentally infect a variety of animals. Human infection by PDCoV has also been reported. Consistently, PDCoV can use aminopeptidase N (APN) from different host species as receptors to enter cells. To understand this broad receptor usage and interspecies transmission of PDCoV, we determined the crystal structures of the receptor binding domain (RBD) of PDCoV spike protein bound to human APN (hAPN) and porcine APN (pAPN), respectively. The structures of the two complexes exhibit high similarity. PDCoV RBD binds to common regions on hAPN and pAPN, which are different from the sites engaged by two alphacoronaviruses: HCoV-229E and porcine respiratory coronavirus (PRCoV). Based on structure guided mutagenesis, we identified conserved residues on hAPN and pAPN that are essential for PDCoV binding and infection. We report the detailed mechanism for how a deltacoronavirus recognizes homologous receptors and provide insights into the cross-species transmission of PDCoV.
In
this work, we propose four novel holey carbon nitride monolayer
C7N3, C10N3, C13N3, and C19N3 stoichiometries intriguingly
behaving as ideal 2D Dirac semimetals whose Dirac cones are rightly
located at the Fermi level. Moreover, the results of Gibbs free energies,
phonon dispersions, ab initio molecular dynamics, and linear elastic
constants indicate that their stabilities are comparable with the
already-synthesized 2D carbon nitride materials. The Dirac cones of
the systems originate from the hopping between all p
z
orbitals of the C and N atoms. The theory of elementary band
representation indicates that the Dirac cones of the systems come
from the time-reversal forced twofold degeneracy at K and K′ points. Furthermore, we find that
the Dirac cones of the systems are robust against the spin–orbit
coupling and external strain. Considering their excellent conductivity
as Dirac semimetals, the four holey carbon nitride monolayers are
potential candidates for the applications in future high-performance
electronic devices.
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