The recent emergence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the underlying cause of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), has led to a worldwide pandemic causing substantial morbidity, mortality, and economic devastation. In response, many laboratories have redirected attention to SARS-CoV-2, meaning there is an urgent need for tools that can be used in laboratories unaccustomed to working with coronaviruses. Here we report a range of tools for SARS-CoV-2 research. First, we describe a facile single plasmid SARS-CoV-2 reverse genetics system that is simple to genetically manipulate and can be used to rescue infectious virus through transient transfection (without in vitro transcription or additional expression plasmids). The rescue system is accompanied by our panel of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (against nearly every viral protein), SARS-CoV-2 clinical isolates, and SARS-CoV-2 permissive cell lines, which are all openly available to the scientific community. Using these tools, we demonstrate here that the controversial ORF10 protein is expressed in infected cells. Furthermore, we show that the promising repurposed antiviral activity of apilimod is dependent on TMPRSS2 expression. Altogether, our SARS-CoV-2 toolkit, which can be directly accessed via our website at https://mrcppu-covid.bio/, constitutes a resource with considerable potential to advance COVID-19 vaccine design, drug testing, and discovery science.

Aromatic hydrocarbons contribute significantly to tropospheric ozone and secondary organic aerosols (SOA). Despite large efforts in elucidating the formation mechanism of aromatic-derived SOA, current models still substantially underestimate the SOA yields when comparing to field measurements. Here we present a new, up to now undiscovered pathway for the formation of highly oxidized products from the OH-initiated oxidation of alkyl benzenes based on theoretical and experimental investigations. We propose that unimolecular H-migration followed by O-addition, a so-called autoxidation step, can take place in bicyclic peroxy radicals (BPRs), which are important intermediates of the OH-initiated oxidation of aromatic compounds. These autoxidation steps lead to the formation of highly oxidized multifunctional compounds (HOMs), which are able to form SOA. Our theoretical calculations suggest that the intramolecular H-migration in BPRs of substituted benzenes could be fast enough to compete with bimolecular reactions with HO radicals or NO under atmospheric conditions. The theoretical findings are experimentally supported by flow tube studies using chemical ionization mass spectrometry to detect the highly oxidized peroxy radical intermediates and closed-shell products. This new unimolecular BPR route to form HOMs in the gas phase enhances our understanding of the aromatic oxidation mechanism, and contributes significantly to a better understanding of aromatic-derived SOA in urban areas.

Theoretical study has been carried out on the fate of methylthiomethylperoxy radical (CH3SCH2OO, MSP) in the atmosphere. The intramolecular H-shift followed by recombination with O2, MSP → CH2SCH2OOH → OOCH2SCH2OOH (MSPO2), is found to be fast enough, that is, 2.1 s(-1) at 293 K, to compete with and even surpass the possible bimolecular reactions of MSP with NOx, HO2, and RO2 in the remote marine atmosphere. MSPO2 would also undergo another intramolecular H-shift and decompose to the most important intermediate HOOCH2SCHO instead of the CH3SCH2O radical. HOOCH2SCHO would be further oxidized via the route as HOOCH2SCO (by OH radical) → HOOCH2S (by decomposition) → HOOCH2SO (by O3 or NO2) → HOOCH2SO2 (by O3 and NO2) → OH + CH2O + SO2 (by decomposition). Our calculations suggest a drastically different oxidation mechanism for dimethyl sulfide (CH3SCH3, DMS) in the remote marine atmosphere.