A High throughput bioluminescent assay to monitor the activity of COVID‐19 Methyltransferases Capping Enzymes

The recent pandemic outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS‐Cov‐2) was first reported in Wuhan, China in late 2019 resulting in infection of over 259 million and death of over 5.17 world‐wide as of November 2021. In the USA, the number of diagnosed individuals reached 48 million with 92,000 Death cases. Despite the lower pathogenicity compared to SARS‐CoV and MERS‐CoV, the high infection rate of SARS‐CoV‐2 results in large numbers of hospitalizations and deaths worldwide. The SARS‐Cov‐2 is an enveloped virus and belongs to the beta coronavirus family containing a large and complex positive–sense single stranded RNA genome (~30kb). It binds to human ACE2 receptor with high affinity via its spike protein (S) and membrane fusion leading to the release of its genomic RNA that replicates and produce higher number of sub‐genomic RNAs. The viral RNA is then capped by nsp 14 and nsp10/16, two nonstructural proteins that catalyze the methylation of RNA to limit its degradation by cellular 5’‐3’ exonuclease and evade host immune system. These enzymes play critical role in translation of the viral RNA and its replication and thus leading to viral survival. We have used a bioluminescent high throughput enzyme assay for monitoring the activity of these enzymes in order to develop novel inhibitors which can be advanced for therapeutic treatment. We show that we can determine the activity of nanogram amounts of these enzymes and test the activity of these enzymes using different inhibitors, some of which are competitive with S‐adenosyl methionine the canonical substrate for these enzymes. We also show the effect of inhibitors that compete with the oligonucleotide substrate. Finally, we tested the effect of a peptide modulator of COVID‐2 on the activity of both nsp 10/16 and nsp 14. The assay is simple, homogenous, fast, and bioluminescent which provides a very robust platform for testing novel compounds on the viral methyltransferases leading to the generation of new drugs towards inhibiting the replication of COVID‐19.