A community effort in SARS-CoV-2 drug discovery.

peer reviewedThe COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose a substantial threat to human lives and is likely to do so for years to come. Despite the availability of vaccines, searching for efficient small-molecule drugs that are widely available, including in low- and middle-income countries, is an ongoing challenge. In this work, we report the results of an open science community effort, the "Billion molecules against Covid-19 challenge", to identify small-molecule inhibitors against SARS-CoV-2 or relevant human receptors. Participating teams used a wide variety of computational methods to screen a minimum of 1 billion virtual molecules against 6 protein targets. Overall, 31 teams participated, and they suggested a total of 639,024 molecules, which were subsequently ranked to find 'consensus compounds'. The organizing team coordinated with various contract research organizations (CROs) and collaborating institutions to synthesize and test 878 compounds for biological activity against proteases (Nsp5, Nsp3, TMPRSS2), nucleocapsid N, RdRP (only the Nsp12 domain), and (alpha) spike protein S. Overall, 27 compounds with weak inhibition/binding were experimentally identified by binding-, cleavage-, and/or viral suppression assays and are presented here. Open science approaches such as the one presented here contribute to the knowledge base of future drug discovery efforts in finding better SARS-CoV-2 treatments.R-AGR-3826 - COVID19-14715687-CovScreen (01/06/2020 - 31/01/2021) - GLAAB Enric

Advanced DNA assembly strategies and standards for synthetic biology

DNA assembly is a fundamental enabling technology for synthetic biology, yet it is also extremely unreliable, expensive and time-consuming. The process usually requires a significant part of total time and effort that can be dedicated to a project, reducing the resources available for the rest of the research, and is also frequently subject to unexpected problems, introducing an undesirable element of unpredictability that might compromise an entire project. This thesis describes the development of three DNA assembly tools that aim to facilitate and speed up synthetic biology research: “MODAL” is a fast and easy to use assembly strategy that brings the advantages of standardisation and modularity to the latest-generation long overlap-based DNA assembly techniques. “Linker” is a software tool that generates DNA sequences specifically optimised to act as high-efficiency homology regions in long overlap-based DNA assembly reactions. Finally with “BASIC” we propose a new DNA assembly standard that incorporates the advances of MODAL and Linker and brings an additional series of improvements in an original assembly workflow. BASIC aims first of all to make DNA assembly significantly more reliable by addressing and/or removing all the unpredictability elements. It also maintains the speed, ease of use and flexibility of MODAL while achieving the same or better efficiency than the best currently available DNA assembly techniques and standards.Open Acces

PCA Inversion of Stokes Profiles in Solar Prominences

International audienc

PCA Inversion of Stokes Profiles in Solar Prominences

International audienc

PCA Inversion of Stokes Profiles in Solar Prominences

International audienc

Hyperfine Structure as a Diagnostic Tool of Solar Magnetic Fields

International audienc

Hyperfine Structure as a Diagnostic Tool of Solar Magnetic Fields

International audienc

Hyperfine Structure as a Diagnostic Tool of Solar Magnetic Fields

International audienc

Quiet-Sun Magnetism Seen with a Mn Line: Km-Sized Magnetic Structures

International audienc