Summary: The Supersized Science podcast features research and discoveries nationwide enabled by advanced computing technology and expertise at the Texas Advanced Computing Center of the University of Texas at Austin. The host is Jorge Salazar, a science writer at TACC. The details of how the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects human lung cells remains a mystery to experimental scientists. Now, the devilish details of the mechanism for fusion of the coronavirus to host cells has been revealed through simulations by University of Chicago researchers using the Frontera supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center. The computer models they’ve developed show cooperative behavior of host cell receptor proteins that lead to their own infection, in work that can be applied to understanding the increased virulence of coronavirus variants such as delta, omicron, and more. On the podcast is Gregory Voth, a distinguished professor of chemistry at the University of Chicago. Voth is lead author on the study that modeled the coronavirus and receptor cell interactions with computer simulations, published February 2022 in the journal Nature Communications. Supersized Science is part of the Texas Podcast Network – the conversations changing the world – brought to you by The University of Texas at Austin. The opinions expressed in this podcast represent the views of the hosts, and not of The University of Texas at Austin.
