Systematic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein subunit trafficking and secretion reveals enhanced strategies for vaccine design and quantification
Qian Zhang, Maria Hammond, Jie Song, Zongwei Fang, Hongxing Zhao, Maréne Landström, Ya-Fang Mei · 2026
Read Systematic characterization of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein subunit trafficking and secretion reveals enhanced strategies for vaccine design and quantification by Qian Zhang, Maria Hammond, Jie Song, Zongwei Fang, Hongxing Zhao, Maréne Landström, Ya-Fang Mei (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13454229.txt.
Description
Qian Zhang and six co-authors map how the coronavirus spike protein and its parts move inside cells and leak out, hunting for better vaccine parts. Their 2026 study expresses the full spike and its subunits in mammalian cells and tracks each one's address. The full spike spread widely: surface, cytoplasm, nucleus, and outside the cell.
The S1 subunit piled up inside cells and secreted more than the full spike, yet showed less on the surface. The binding domain and S2 parts mostly stuck to the cell's inner scaffolding. Adding a stronger signal tag flipped the binding domain into a secretion star, reaching about 100 times the full spike's outside level. A proximity assay read these levels far more sensitively than standard methods. The authors back the tagged binding domain as a vaccine candidate.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Qian Zhang, Maria Hammond, Jie Song, Zongwei Fang, Hongxing Zhao, Maréne Landström, Ya-Fang Mei |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 46 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |