Antibody accessibility determines location of spike surface mutations in SARS-CoV-2 variants
Fig 2
Mutations in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 variants concentrate in regions of high epitope and accessibility scores.
Top views (A, B) and side views (C, D) of spike. Pink spheres show positions of Omicron BA.1 mutations, red spheres show positions unique to Omicron BA.5 mutations, and yellow spheres are those in earlier variants. Intense purple surface shading in A and C indicates high consensus epitope score [18]. Intense cyan surface shading in B and D indicates high AAS. Structures are snapshots from earlier MD simulations [19]. Proteins were rendered with Visual Molecular Dynamics (VMD) v1.9.3 [20].