The outbreak of 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has caused serious threat to public health. Discovery of new anti-COVID-19 drugs is urgently needed. Fortunately, the crystal structure of COVID-19 3CL proteinase was recently resolved. The proteinase has been identified as a promising target for drug discovery in this crisis. Here, a dataset including 2030 natural compounds was screened and refined based on the machine learning and molecular docking. The performance of six machine learning (ML) methods of predicting active coronavirus inhibitors had achieved satisfactory accuracy, especially, the AUC (Area Under ROC Curve) scores with fivefold cross-validation of Logistic Regression (LR) reached up to 0.976. Comprehensive ML prediction and molecular docking results accounted for the compound Rutin, which was approved by NMPA (National Medical Products Administration), exhibited the best AUC and the most promising binding affinity compared to other compounds. Therefore, Rutin might be a promising agent in anti-COVID-19 drugs development.

His-Asn-His (HNH) proteins are a very common family of small nucleic acid-binding proteins that are generally associated with endonuclease activity and are found in all kingdoms of life. Although HNH endonucleases from mesophiles have been widely investigated, the biochemical functions of HNH endonucleases from thermophilic bacteriophages remain unknown. Here, we characterized the biochemical properties of a thermostable HNH endonuclease from deep-sea thermophilic bacteriophage GVE2. The recombinant GVE2 HNH endonuclease exhibited non-specific cleavage activity at high temperature. The optimal temperature of the GVE2 HNH endonuclease for cleaving DNA was 60-65 °C, and the enzyme retained its DNA cleavage activity even after heating at 100 °C for 30 min, suggesting the enzyme is a thermostable endonuclease. The GVE2 HNH endonuclease cleaved DNA over a wide pH spectrum, ranging from 5.5 to 9.0, and the optimal pH for the enzyme activity was 8.0-9.0. Furthermore, the GVE2 HNH endonuclease activity was dependent on a divalent metal ion. While the enzyme is inactive in the presence of Cu(2+), the GVE2 HNH endonuclease displayed cleavage activity of varied efficiency with Mn(2+), Mg(2+), Ca(2+), Fe(2+), Co(2+), Zn(2+), and Ni(2+). The GVE2 HNH endonuclease activity was inhibited by NaCl. This study provides the basis for determining the role of this endonuclease in life cycle of the bacteriophage GVE2 and suggests the potential application of the enzyme in molecular biology and biotechnology.

The diversity and ecological significance of bacteria and archaea in deep-sea environments have been thoroughly investigated, but eukaryotic microorganisms in these areas, such as fungi, are poorly understood. To elucidate fungal diversity in calcareous deep-sea sediments in the Southwest India Ridge (SWIR), the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of rRNA genes from two sediment metagenomic DNA samples were amplified and sequenced using the Illumina sequencing platform. The results revealed that 58-63 % and 36-42 % of the ITS sequences (97 % similarity) belonged to Basidiomycota and Ascomycota, respectively. These findings suggest that Basidiomycota and Ascomycota are the predominant fungal phyla in the two samples. We also found that Agaricomycetes, Leotiomycetes, and Pezizomycetes were the major fungal classes in the two samples. At the species level, Thelephoraceae sp. and Phialocephala fortinii were major fungal species in the two samples. Despite the low relative abundance, unidentified fungal sequences were also observed in the two samples. Furthermore, we found that there were slight differences in fungal diversity between the two sediment samples, although both were collected from the SWIR. Thus, our results demonstrate that calcareous deep-sea sediments in the SWIR harbor diverse fungi, which augment the fungal groups in deep-sea sediments. This is the first report of fungal communities in calcareous deep-sea sediments in the SWIR revealed by Illumina sequencing.