The pET30a vector (Novagen, Merck Group) encoding for the RBD fused with an N-terminal superfolder GFP (sfGFP) fusion tag (Pedelacq et al. 2006 (link)) and a C-terminal His tag was used as the template for site-directed mutagenesis. The amino acid residues 442–460 and 473–495 in the RBD were individually replaced with alanine by using the PCR-based site-directed mutagenesis method as described in the previous study (Lai et al. 2022 (link)). All mutations were confirmed by Sanger sequencing.