A P3' Methionine-to-Phenylalanine Substitution in the NSP6-7 Substrate Peptide Alters SARS-CoV-2 Mpro Dynamics and Enhances its Processing in Living Cells.
The SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) cleaves viral polyproteins at 11 sites to release nonstructural proteins required for replication, with site-specific sequence differences influencing processing efficiency. Among these substrates, NSP6-7 is consistently the slowest-cleaved, while NSP4-5 is among the fastest. However...