The coronavirus disease 2019 is a contagious disease and had caused havoc throughout the world by creating widespread mortality and morbidity. The unavailability of vaccines and proper antiviral drugs encourages the researchers to identify potential antiviral drugs to be used against the virus. The presence of RNA binding domain in the nucleocapsid (N) protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) could be a potential drug target, which serves multiple critical functions during the viral life cycle, especially the viral replication. Since vaccine development might take some time, the identification of a drug compound targeting viral replication might offer a solution for treatment. The study analyzed the phylogenetic relationship of N protein sequence divergence with other 49 coronavirus species and also identified the conserved regions according to protein families through conserved domain search. Good structural binding affinities of a few natural and/or synthetic phytocompounds or drugs against N protein were determined using the molecular docking approaches. The analyzed compounds presented the higher numbers of hydrogen bonds of selected chemicals supporting the drug-ability of these compounds. Among them, the established antiviral drug glycyrrhizic acid and the phytochemical theaflavin can be considered as possible drug compounds against target N protein of SARS-CoV-2 as they showed lower binding affinities. The findings of this study might lead to the development of a drug for the SARS-Cov-2 mediated disease and offer solution to treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The coronavirus disease 2019 is a contagious disease and had caused havoc throughout the world by creating widespread mortality and morbidity. The unavailability of vaccines and proper antiviral drugs encourages the researchers to identify potential antiviral drugs to be used against the virus. The presence of RNA binding domain in the nucleocapsid (N) protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) could be a potential drug target, which serves multiple critical functions during the viral life cycle, especially the viral replication. Since vaccine development might take some time, the identification of a drug compound targeting viral replication might offer a solution for treatment. The study analyzed the phylogenetic relationship of N protein sequence divergence with other 49 coronavirus species and also identified the conserved regions according to protein families through conserved domain search. Good structural binding affinities of a few natural and/or synthetic phytocompounds or drugs against N protein were determined using the molecular docking approaches. The analyzed compounds presented the higher numbers of hydrogen bonds of selected chemicals supporting the drug-ability of these compounds. Among them, the established antiviral drug glycyrrhizic acid and the phytochemical theaflavin can be considered as possible drug compounds against target N protein of SARS-CoV-2 as they showed lower binding affinities. The findings of this study might lead to the development of a drug for the SARS-Cov-2 mediated disease and offer solution to treatment of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Non-syndromic hearing loss (NSHL) is a common hereditary disorder. Both clinical and genetic heterogeneity has created many obstacles to understanding the causes of NSHL. The present study has attempted to ravel the genetic aetiology in NSHL progression and to screen out potential target genes using computational approaches. The reported NSHL target genes (2009‒2020) have been studied by analyzing different biochemical and signaling pathways, interpretation of their functional association network, and discovery of important regulatory interactions with three previously established miRNAs in the human inner ear as well as in NSHL such as miR-183, miR-182, and miR-96. This study has identified SMAD4 and SNAI2 as the most putative target genes of NSHL. But pathogenic and deleterious non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNP) discovered within SMAD4 is anticipated to have an impact on NSHL progression. Additionally, the identified deleterious variants in the functional domains of SMAD4 added a supportive clue for further study. Thus, the identified deleterious variant i.e., rs377767367 (G491V) in SMAD4 needs further clinical validation. The present outcomes would provide insights into the genetics of NSHL progression.