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2) Role of phosphorylation of coronavirus nucleocapsid proteins

The nucleocapsid protein N of coronaviruses plays a key role in RNA synthesis and is involved in the formation of gRNA as well as in the discontinuous transcription of subgenomic mRNAs.
Phosphorylation of N plays an essential role in its functionality and occurs at a highly conserved arginine-serine-rich region (R/S region). We are particularly interested to what extent there are conserved mechanisms shared between different coronaviruses (a-CoV such as typical cold viruses HCoV 229E or ß-CoV such as SARS-CoV-2 or MERS-CoV) with respect to conserved phosphorylation sites, conserved cellular kinases/phophatases that contribute to the regulation of viral replication