https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201208163007.htm

The researchers' original manuscript preprint, made available online in March, was among the first to computationally investigate SARS-CoV-2's high affinity, or tendency to bind, with human ACE2. The paper was published online on Sept. 18 in the Computational and Structural Biotechnology Journal. The work was conceived and led by Costas Maranas, Donald B. Broughton Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, and his former graduate student Ratul Chowdhury, who is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School.

"We were interested in answering two important questions," said Veda Sheersh Boorla, doctoral student in chemical engineering and co-author on the paper. "We wanted to first discern key structural changes that give COVID-19 a higher affinity towards human ACE2 proteins when compared with SARS, and then assess its potential affinity to livestock or other animal ACE2 proteins."