Highly effective viral RdRP translocation hindrance by the remdesivir nucleotide
Rui Li, Qiang Shao, Meihua Wang, Chunyan Feng, Qin Xu, Qisheng Wang, Luqing Shang, Yechun Xu, Peng Gong · 2026
Read Highly effective viral RdRP translocation hindrance by the remdesivir nucleotide by Rui Li, Qiang Shao, Meihua Wang, Chunyan Feng, Qin Xu, Qisheng Wang, Luqing Shang, Yechun Xu, Peng Gong (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/pmc-13678209.txt.
Description
Rui Li and eight co-authors showed how the antiviral remdesivir jams a virus's copying machine in a 2026 study. Remdesivir resembles a building block of RNA. Once built into the growing strand, it sabotages copying a few steps later, a delayed strike whose mechanics were murky. The team combined X-ray structures, fast kinetics, and simulations on an enterovirus polymerase.
The stall sits in translocation, the step where the machine slides along the strand. Moving the drug from one position to the next, plus the following chemistry, ran at least a hundred times slower than for the natural block. Swapping one roadblock amino acid largely erased the slowdown, though energy maps still shifted. Blocking the slide itself is a design strategy for future antivirals, they argue.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Rui Li, Qiang Shao, Meihua Wang, Chunyan Feng, Qin Xu, Qisheng Wang, Luqing Shang, Yechun Xu, Peng Gong |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 45 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |