Graduate students Chaemin Lee and Yunha Hwang (College of Natural Science, Department of Chemistry; supervisor Professor Seungjae Lee) were selected for the December cover article of Dalton Transactions, a journal published by the Royal Society of Chemistry, for their study that revealed structural correlations able to inhibit viral binding.

Amid rising concern about viruses such as COVID-19, the team announced an important mechanism showing that metalloproteins play a role in inhibiting binding, attracting attention from the global academic community.

They found that ConA, which contains manganese and calcium ions, can be substituted by other metal ions depending on the protein's solvating environment, and that its monomeric structure undergoes structural changes to form dimers or trimers.

Relatedly, ConA proteins forming polymeric structures can alter their binding characteristics with glycoproteins that are important for viral attachment, and the researchers conducted biophysical and biochemical studies on this matter.

This research is being carried out with support from the Genetic Engineering Research Institute, a flagship research institute at Jeonbuk National University (JBNU) (Director: Professor Daehyuk Kim), as part of the ongoing project "Development and Application of Rapid, Customized Genetic Engineering-Based Technologies for Control of National Disaster-Type Diseases." To date, the team has reported results on the binding characteristics between metalloproteins and viruses and on viral detection technologies.