The DOI matches its Crossref record; 35 of the 35 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The N501Y spike substitution enhances SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission
Open accessAbstract
The B.1.1.7 variant (also known as Alpha) of SARS-CoV-2, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic, emerged in the UK in the summer of 2020. The prevalence of this variant increased rapidly owing to an increase in infection and/or transmission efficiency1. The Alpha variant contains 19 nonsynonymous mutations across its viral genome, including 8 substitutions or deletions in the spike protein that interacts with cellular receptors to mediate infection and tropism. Here, using a reverse genetics approach, we show that of the 8 individual spike protein substitutions, only N501Y resulted in consistent fitness gains for replication in the upper airway in a hamster model as well as in primary human airway epithelial cells. The N501Y substitution recapitulated the enhanced viral transmission phenotype of the eight mutations in the Alpha spike protein, suggesting that it is a major determinant of the increased transmission of the Alpha variant. Mechanistically, the N501Y substitution increased the affinity of the viral spike protein for cellular receptors. As suggested by its convergent evolution in Brazil, South Africa and elsewhere2,3, our results indicate that N501Y substitution is an adaptive spike mutation of major concern. Experiments in a hamster model of COVID-19 and human airway epithelial cells show that the spike N501Y mutation is the major determinant of increased fitness of the B.1.1.7 Alpha variant of SARS-CoV-2.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
A pneumonia outbreak associated with a new coronavirus of probable bat origin
Zhou, P., Yang, X.-L., Wang, X.-G., Hu, B., Zhang, L., Zhang, W., Si, H.-R., Zhu, Y., Li, B., Huang, C.-L., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2012-7 · Cited by 21,969
Wan, Y., Shang, J., Graham, R., Baric, R. S., & Li, F. (2020) · Journal of Virology · doi:10.1128/jvi.00127-20 · Cited by 4,341
The New Statistics: Why and How
Cumming, G. (2014) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797613504966 · Cited by 3,200
Huang, Y., Yang, C., Xu, X.-F., Xu, W., & Liu, S.-W. (2020) · Acta Pharmacologica Sinica · doi:10.1038/s41401-020-0485-4 · Cited by 2,224
Starr, T. N., Greaney, A. J., Hilton, S. K., Ellis, D., Crawford, K. H. D., Dingens, A. S., Navarro, M. J., Bowen, J. E., Tortorici, M. A., Walls, A. C., et al. (2020) · Cell · doi:10.1016/j.cell.2020.08.012 · Cited by 1,956
Assessing transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 in England
The COVID-19 Genomics UK (COG-UK) consortium, Volz, E., Mishra, S., Chand, M., Barrett, J. C., Johnson, R., Geidelberg, L., Hinsley, W. R., Laydon, D. J., Dabrera, G., et al. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03470-x · Cited by 1,611
Spike mutation D614G alters SARS-CoV-2 fitness
Plante, J. A., Liu, Y., Liu, J., Xia, H., Johnson, B. A., Lokugamage, K. G., Zhang, X., Muruato, A. E., Zou, J., Fontes-Garfias, C. R., et al. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2895-3 · Cited by 1,558
Self-citationChan, J. F.-W., Zhang, A. J., Yuan, S., Poon, V. K.-M., Chan, C. C.-S., Lee, A. C.-Y., Chan, W.-M., Fan, Z., Tsoi, H.-W., Wen, L., et al. (2020) · Clinical Infectious Diseases · doi:10.1093/cid/ciaa325 · Cited by 1,058
SARS-CoV-2 D614G variant exhibits efficient replication ex vivo and transmission in vivo
Hou, Y. J., Chiba, S., Halfmann, P., Ehre, C., Kuroda, M., Dinnon, K. H., Leist, S. R., Schäfer, A., Nakajima, N., Takahashi, K., et al. (2020) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.abe8499 · Cited by 900
Chen, R. E., Zhang, X., Case, J. B., Winkler, E. S., Liu, Y., VanBlargan, L. A., Liu, J., Errico, J. M., Xie, X., Suryadevara, N., et al. (2021) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41591-021-01294-w · Cited by 881
Self-citation
Cited by
SARS-CoV-2 variant biology: immune escape, transmission and fitness
Carabelli, A. M., Peacock, T. P., Thorne, L. G., Harvey, W. T., Hughes, J., COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, de Silva, T. I., Peacock, S. J., Barclay, W. S., de Silva, T. I., et al. (2023) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-022-00841-7 · Cited by 1,291
The biological and clinical significance of emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants
Tao, K., Tzou, P. L., Nouhin, J., Gupta, R. K., de Oliveira, T., Kosakovsky Pond, S. L., Fera, D., & Shafer, R. W. (2021) · Nature Reviews Genetics · doi:10.1038/s41576-021-00408-x · Cited by 1,009
Lamers, M. M., & Haagmans, B. L. (2022) · Nature Reviews Microbiology · doi:10.1038/s41579-022-00713-0 · Cited by 983
Kurhade, C., Zou, J., Xia, H., Liu, M., Chang, H. C., Ren, P., Xie, X., & Shi, P. (2023) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/s41591-022-02162-x · Cited by 423
Self-citationBNT162b2-elicited neutralization of B.1.617 and other SARS-CoV-2 variants
Liu, J., Liu, Y., Xia, H., Zou, J., Weaver, S. C., Swanson, K. A., Cai, H., Cutler, M., Cooper, D., Muik, A., et al. (2021) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03693-y · Cited by 342
Self-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Liu, Y., Liu, J., Plante, K. S., Plante, J. A., Xie, X., Zhang, X., Ku, Z., An, Z., Scharton, D., Schindewolf, C., Widen, S. G., Menachery, V. D., Shi, P.-Y., & Weaver, S. C.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2021-11-24
- Volume
- 602
- Issue
- 7896
- Pages
- 294-299
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- OpenAlex
- W3216019834
- Cited by
- 572
- References
- 35
- FWCI
- 35.31
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The N501Y spike substitution enhances SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1038/s41586-021-04245-0
- The paper
- Liu, Y., Liu, J., Plante, K. S., Plante, J. A., Xie, X., Zhang, X., Ku, Z., An, Z., Scharton, D., Schindewolf, C., Widen, S. G., Menachery, V. D., Shi, P.-Y., & Weaver, S. C. (2022). The N501Y spike substitution enhances SARS-CoV-2 infection and transmission. Nature. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04245-0
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
