Pregnolato Massimo, Zizzi Paola
Department of Drug Science, University of Pavia, Via Taramelli 12, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
Department of Brain and Behavioural Sciences, University of Pavia, Piazza Botta, 11, 27100 Pavia, Italy.
Quantum Mach Intell. 2023;5(1):8. doi: 10.1007/s42484-023-00098-0. Epub 2023 Jan 27.
We describe the binding between the glycoprotein Spike of SARS-CoV-2 and the human host cell receptor ACE2 as a quantum circuit, comprising the one-qubit Hadamard quantum logic gate performing the quantum superposition of the S subunit of the Spike protein, and the two-qubit quantum logic gate CNOT, which performs maximum entanglement between the Spike-qubit S and the ACE2 receptor protein. Also, we consider two strategies to prevent the binding process between the Spike-qubit S and the ACE2 receptor. The first one is the use of competitive peptidomimetic inhibitors that can selectively bind to the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the Spike glycoprotein with much higher affinity than the cell surface receptor itself. These inhibitors are targeted to the CNOT quantum logic gate and will get maximally entangled with the S qubit in place of the natural ACE2 receptor. The second one is to use covalent inhibitors, which will destroy S by acting as a projective quantum measurement. Finally, the conjecture that S is a quantum bio-robot is formulated.
我们将严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2(SARS-CoV-2)的糖蛋白刺突(Spike)与人类宿主细胞受体血管紧张素转换酶2(ACE2)之间的结合描述为一个量子电路,它包括执行刺突蛋白S亚基量子叠加的单量子比特哈达玛(Hadamard)量子逻辑门,以及执行刺突量子比特S与ACE2受体蛋白之间最大纠缠的双量子比特量子逻辑门CNOT。此外,我们考虑了两种防止刺突量子比特S与ACE2受体之间结合过程的策略。第一种是使用竞争性拟肽抑制剂,其可以以比细胞表面受体本身高得多的亲和力选择性地结合到刺突糖蛋白的受体结合域(RBD)。这些抑制剂靶向CNOT量子逻辑门,并将代替天然ACE2受体与S量子比特最大程度地纠缠。第二种是使用共价抑制剂,其将通过作为投影量子测量来破坏S。最后,提出了S是一种量子生物机器人的猜想。