Open Access

Anna Wacker, Julia Weigand, Sabine R. Akabayov, Nadide Altınçekiç, Jasleen Kaur Bains, Elnaz Banijamali, Oliver Binas, Jesus Castillo-Martinez, Erhan Can Çetiner, Betül Ceylan, Liang-Yuan Chiu, Jesse Davila-Calderon, Karthikeyan Dhamotharan, Elke Duchardt-Ferner, Jan Ferner, Lucio Frydman, Boris Fürtig, José Gallego, J. Tassilo Grün, Carolin Hacker, Christina Haddad, Martin Jens Hähnke, Martin Hengesbach, Fabian Hiller, Katharina Felicitas Hohmann, Daniel Hymon, Vanessa de Jesus, Henry Jonker, Heiko Keller, Božana Knežić, Tom Landgraf, Frank Löhr, Le Luo, Klara Rebecca Mertinkus, Christina Muhs, Mihajlo Novakovic, Andreas Oxenfarth, Martina Palomino-Schätzlein, Katja Petzold, Stephen Peter, Dennis Joshua Pyper, Nusrat Qureshi, Magdalena Riad, Christian Richter, Krishna Saxena, Tatjana Schamber, Tali Scherf, Judith Schlagnitweit, Andreas Schlundt, Robbin Schnieders, Harald Schwalbe, Alvaro Simba-Lahuasi, Sridhar Sreeramulu, Elke Stirnal, Alexey Sudakov, Jan-Niklas Tants, Blanton S. Tolbert, Jennifer Vögele, Lena Weiß, Julia Wirmer-Bartoschek, Maria Alexandra Wirtz Martin, Jens Wöhnert, Heidi Zetzsche

• The current pandemic situation caused by the Betacoronavirus SARS-CoV-2 (SCoV2) highlights the need for coordinated research to combat COVID-19. A particularly important aspect is the development of medication. In addition to viral proteins, structured RNA elements represent a potent alternative as drug targets. The search for drugs that target RNA requires their high-resolution structural characterization. Using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, a worldwide consortium of NMR researchers aims to characterize potential RNA drug targets of SCoV2. Here, we report the characterization of 15 conserved RNA elements located at the 5′ end, the ribosomal frameshift segment and the 3′-untranslated region (3′-UTR) of the SCoV2 genome, their large-scale production and NMR-based secondary structure determination. The NMR data are corroborated with secondary structure probing by DMS footprinting experiments. The close agreement of NMR secondary structure determination of isolated RNA elements with DMS footprinting and NMR performed on larger RNA regions shows that the secondary structure elements fold independently. The NMR data reported here provide the basis for NMR investigations of RNA function, RNA interactions with viral and host proteins and screening campaigns to identify potential RNA binders for pharmaceutical intervention.