Fig. 7 Amino acid sequence alignments of the ganglioside/ATM binding domain of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The first group of sequences includes clinical SARS-CoV-2 isolates from various geographical origins aligned with the reference sequence (6VSB_A, fragment 111-162). The QFN triad is highlighted in yellow. The second group of sequences includes human and animal viruses compared with SARS-CoV-2. Deletions are highlighted in green, amino acid changes are highlighted in blue, conserved residues of the QFN triad are highlighted in yellow. The degree of conservation observed in each column is symbolized by an asterisk (*) when the residue is fully conserved, a colon (:) for distinct residues with strongly similar properties (scoring > 0.5 in the Gonnet PAM 250 matrix), and a period (.) for distinct residues with weakly similar properties (scoring ≤ 0.5 in the Gonnet PAM 250 matrix).