publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. Journal Pre-proof NBCZone: Universal three-dimensional construction of eleven amino acids near the catalytic nucleophile and base in the superfamily of (chymo)trypsin-like serine fold proteases Please cite this article as: A.I. Denesyuk, M.S. Johnson, O.M.H. Salo-Ahen, et al., NBCZone: Universal three-dimensional construction of eleven amino acids near the catalytic nucleophile and base in the superfamily of (chymo)trypsin-like serine fold proteases, International Journal of Biological Macromolecules(2020), https://doi.Journal Pre-proof J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f 2 Abstract(Chymo)trypsin-like serine fold proteases belong to the serine/cysteine proteases found in eukaryotes, prokaryotes, and viruses. Their catalytic activity is carried out using a triad of amino acids, a nucleophile, a base, and an acid. For this superfamily of proteases, we propose the existence of a universal 3D structure comprising 11 amino acids near the catalytic nucleophile and base -Nucleophile-Base Catalytic Zone (NBCZone). The comparison of NBCZones among 169 eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and viral (chymo)trypsin-like proteases suggested the existence of 15 distinct groups determined by the combination of amino acids located at two "key" structure-functional positions 54 T and 55 T near the catalytic base His57 T .Most eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteases fell into two major groups, [ST]A and TN.Usually, proteases of [ST]A group contain a disulfide bond between cysteines Cys42 T and Cys58 T of the NBCZone. In contrast, viral proteases were distributed among seven groups, and lack this disulfide bond. Furthermore, only the [ST]A group of eukaryotic proteases contains glycine at position 43 T , which is instrumental for activation of these enzymes. In contrast, due to the side chains of residues at position 43 T prokaryotic and viral proteases do not have the ability to carry out the structural transition of the eukaryotic zymogen-zyme type. Journal Pre-proof J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f pattern G-[DE]-S-G-[GS] (https://prosite.expasy.org/; PROSITE documentation PDOC00124; TRYPSIN_SER, PS00135 [8]). In addition to this pattern, there is also a histidine active site pattern [LIVM]-[ST]-A-[STAG]-H-C (TRYPSIN_HIS, PS00134). In both families, the oxyanion hole is situated adjacent to the nucleophile and is mainly shaped by the main-chain nitrogen atoms of two residues, but again the sequential order is different. Knowing the importance of the existence of a catalytic acid, nucleophile, and oxyanion zones for the function of the α/β hydrolases fold enzymes and with the possible presence of similar structural formations in other types of hydrolases, we carried out a detailed analysis of the spatial structures of (chymo)trypsin-like serine fold prot...