Never ending story? Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 monitored through Gibbs energies of biosynthesis and antigen-receptor binding of Omicron BQ.1, BQ.1.1, XBB and XBB.1 variants

Brief History of Thermodynamic Research on Microorganisms

“…The result of competition was the suppression of the old variants with newer ones, which exhibited greater infectivity [Eales et al, 2022]. All variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been chemically and thermodynamically characterized [Popovic, 2023b[Popovic, , 2023c[Popovic, , 2023d[Popovic, , 2022b[Popovic, , 2022c[Popovic, , 2022d During the time evolution of the virus, through acquisition of mutations, changes occurred in the elemental composition, information content in the genome and spike glycoprotein, towards formation of a greater binding affinity for the receptor [Makowski et al, 2022]. An increase in binding affinity resulted in a greater antigen-receptor binding rate.…”

“…Replacement of one or more nucleotides with another (which is the basis of mutation) leads to change in empirical formula of the thermodynamic system (bacteria or virus). Empirical formulas of viruses have been reported in the literature [Degueldre, 2021;Şimşek et al, 2021;Popovic, 2023bPopovic, , 2023cPopovic, , 2023d.…”

“…Mutations that appeared during 3 years on SARS-CoV-2, from the Hu-1 to XBB.1.5 variant, have been reported in the literature [Degueldre, 2021;Şimşek et al, 2021;Popovic, 2023bPopovic, , 2023cPopovic, , 2023dPopovic, , 2022bPopovic, , 2022cPopovic, , 2022dPopovic and Popovic, 2022;Minceva, 2021a, 2020b]. Chemical and thermodynamic properties of various viruses can be found in the literature [Popovic, 2022i, 2022j, 2022k, 2023e].…”

“…During the last 3 years, the atom counting method has been developed for calculating empirical formulas of microorganisms [Popovic, 2022m]. Empirical formulas of SARS-CoV-2 virus particles have been reported by [Degueldre, 2021;Şimşek et al, 2021;Popovic, 2023bPopovic, , 2023cPopovic, , 2023dPopovic, , 2022cPopovic, , 2022dPopovic and Minceva, 2020b]. Thermodynamic properties of human host tissues have been reported in the literature [Xu et al, 2022;Popovic, 2022i;Popovic and Minceva, 2020c].…”

“…In that way, conditions were formed for research on virus-host interactions from the perspective of thermodynamics. Models were developed for hijacking of host cell metabolism [Popovic and Minceva, 2020a] and for thermodynamic consequences of virus mutations [Popovic, 2023b. Thermodynamic background of virus-host interactions is available in the literature [Casasnovas and Springer, 1995;Gale, 2022Gale, , 2020Gale, , 2019Gale, , 2018Mahmoudabadi et al, 2020;Ceres and Zlotnick, 2002;Katen and Zlotnick, 2009;Tzlil et al, 2004].…”