Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Goh, Gerard Kian-Meng
• Dunker, A Keith
• Foster, James A
• Uversky, Vladimir N

Titel

Shell Disorder Models Detect That Omicron Has Harder Shells with Attenuation but Is Not a Descendant of the Wuhan-Hu-1 SARS-CoV-2

Ist Teil von

• Biomolecules (Basel, Switzerland), 2022-04, Vol.12 (5), p.631

Ort / Verlag

Switzerland: MDPI AG

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Free E-Journal (出版社公開部分のみ）

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Before the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant emergence, shell disorder models (SDM) suggested that an attenuated precursor from pangolins may have entered humans in 2017 or earlier. This was based on a shell disorder analysis of SARS-CoV-1/2 and pangolin-Cov-2017. The SDM suggests that Omicron is attenuated with almost identical N (inner shell) disorder as pangolin-CoV-2017 (N-PID (percentage of intrinsic disorder): 44.8% vs. 44.9%-lower than other variants). The outer shell disorder (M-PID) of Omicron is lower than that of other variants and pangolin-CoV-2017 (5.4% vs. 5.9%). COVID-19-related CoVs have the lowest M-PIDs (hardest outer shell) among all CoVs. This is likely to be responsible for the higher contagiousness of SARS-CoV-2 and Omicron, since hard outer shell protects the virion from salivary/mucosal antimicrobial enzymes. Phylogenetic study using M reveals that Omicron branched off from an ancestor of the Wuhan-Hu-1 strain closely related to pangolin-CoVs. M, being evolutionarily conserved in COVID-19, is most ideal for COVID-19 phylogenetic study. Omicron may have been hiding among burrowing animals (e.g., pangolins) that provide optimal evolutionary environments for attenuation and increase shell hardness, which is essential for fecal-oral-respiratory transmission via buried feces. Incoming data support SDM e.g., the presence of fewer infectious particles in the lungs than in the bronchi upon infection.