Computational, Experimental, and Clinical Evidence of a Specific But Peculiar Evolutionary Nature of (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2022
Keywords
Pangolin, Intrinsic Disorder Protein, Nucleocapsid, Virulence, Shell, COVID, Coronavirus, Vaccine, Immune, Antibody, Shell, Nucleoprotein, Membrane, Matrix, Attenuate, Severe Acute Respiratory, Omicron
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jproteome.2c00001
Abstract
The shell disorder models have predicted that SARS-CoV-2 is of a specific but peculiar evolutionary nature. All coronaviruses (CoVs) closely related to SARS-CoV-2 have been found to have the hardest outer shells (M protein) among CoVs. This hard shell (low M percentage of intrinsic disorder (PID)) is associated with burrowing animals, for example, pangolins, and is believed to be responsible for the high contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 because it will be more resistant to antimicrobial enzymes found in saliva/mucus. Incoming clinical and experimental data do support this along with a prediction based on another aspect of the shell (N, inner shell) disorder models that SARS-CoV-1 is more virulent than SARS-CoV-2 because SARS-CoV-2 produces fewer virus copies in vital organs even if large amounts of infections particles are shed orally and nasally. A phylogenetic study using M reveals a closer relationship of SARS-CoV to pangolin-CoVs than the bat-RaTG13 found in Yunnan, China. Previous studies may have been confused by recombinations that were poorly handled. The shell disorder models suggest that a pangolin-CoV strain may have entered the human population in 2017 or before as an attenuated virus, which could explain why SARS-CoV is found to be highly adapted to humans.
Was this content written or created while at USF?
Yes
Citation / Publisher Attribution
Journal of Proteome Research, v. 21, issue 4, p. 874-890
Scholar Commons Citation
Goh, Gerard Kian-Meng; Dunker, A. Keith; Foster, James A.; and Uversky, Vladimir N., "Computational, Experimental, and Clinical Evidence of a Specific But Peculiar Evolutionary Nature of (COVID-19) SARS-CoV-2" (2022). Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications. 976.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/mme_facpub/976
