Phase transitions may explain why SARS-CoV-2 spreads so fast and why new variants are spreading faster.

Autor: Phillips JC; Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, United States of America., Moret MA; SENAI CIMATEC Salvador, BA, Brazil., Zebende GF; Department of Physics, State University of Feira de Santana, BA, Brazil., Chow CC; Mathematical Biology Section, NIDDK, NIH, Bethesda, Md 20892, United States of America.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Physica A [Physica A] 2022 Jul 15; Vol. 598, pp. 127318. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Apr 12.
DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2022.127318
Abstrakt: The novel coronavirus SARS CoV-2 responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic and SARS CoV-1 responsible for the SARS epidemic of 2002-2003 share an ancestor yet evolved to have much different transmissibility and global impact 1 . A previously developed thermodynamic model of protein conformations hypothesized that SARS CoV-2 is very close to a new thermodynamic critical point, which makes it highly infectious but also easily displaced by a spike-based vaccine because there is a tradeoff between transmissibility and robustness 2 . The model identified a small cluster of four key mutations of SARS CoV-2 that predicts much stronger viral attachment and viral spreading compared to SARS CoV-1. Here we apply the model to the SARS-CoV-2 variants Alpha (B.1.1.7), Beta (B.1.351), Gamma (P.1) and Delta (B.1.617.2) 3 and predict, using no free parameters, how the new mutations will not diminish the effectiveness of current spike based vaccines and may even further enhance infectiousness by augmenting the binding ability of the virus.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Databáze: MEDLINE
Externí odkaz: