On the Intrinsic Nature of Viral Pathogenesis: The Assumption of a Darwinian Paradigm to Describe COVID-19 Pandemic

Overview

Journal Comput Struct Biotechnol J

Specialty Biotechnology

Date 2022 Nov 2

PMID 36320938

Authors

Pier Francesco Roggero

Arianna Calistri

Giorgio Palu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Our hypothesis about evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic foresees an inverse relation between infectivity (R0) and lethality (L) of SARS-CoV-2. The above parameters are driven by a continuing mutation process granting the virus a clear survival advantage over virulence. For interpreting this relation we adopted a simple equation, R0 × L k, by which R0 and L depend upon a constant k, that corresponds to an intrinsic property of the viral species involved. The hypothesis was verified by following changes of the R0 and L terms of the formula in the different variants of SARS-CoV-2 that progressively appeared. A further validation came when the equation was applied to pandemic and epidemic influenza type A viruses, Ebola virus and measles virus. We believe this equation that considers virus biology in Darwinian terms could be extremely useful to better face infectious viral threats and validate virus-host molecular interactions relevant to viral pathogenesis.

Citing Articles

The chaos law is a principal driver of natural selection: A proposition on the evolution of recently emerged coronaviruses.

Roggero P, Calistri A, Palu G PLoS One. 2023; 18(8):e0290453.

PMID: 37616261 PMC: 10449193. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0290453.

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