Essentials of the COVID-19 coronavirus

This chapter presents the essential characteristics of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) coronavirus in terms of the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of the mutant strains causing the current global pandemic, with symptoms ranging from fever; dry cough; tiredness; loss of taste, smell, and speech; sore throat; and chest pain to difficulty in breathing and constituting a threat to the existence of humanity. Preliminary in silico studies of retrieved sequences for coronavirus isolates from some endemic countries, presented in this chapter, extensively revealed the true characteristics of the coronavirus isolates, ranging from molecular weight, total number of atoms, aliphatic index, instability index, extinction coefficient, theoretic isoelectric point, grand hydropathicity, total number of negatively and positively charged amino acids residues, secondary protein structure characteristics, variations in the tertiary protein 3D structures, and the guanine–cytosine content in the RNA sequence of the isolates. Preliminary in silico determination of genetic and thermal stability potentials of the isolates has also been revealed using the instability index, aliphatic index, guanine–cytosine content, hydropathicity, and half-life of the isolates in human reticulocytes in vitro. The scary characteristics of the coronaviruses were revealed in their ability to mutate at a faster rate producing many mutant copies of the virus that are not exact, thus conferring on it the ability to escape the host immune system. This probably is responsible for the resurgence of the viruses with varied characteristics and antigens that differ from the previous strains, thus giving room for the risk of a pandemic. This calls for a more concerted effort in studying the essentials and mutation rates of the viruses to be able to predict the future mutation rate and possible attributes with a view to finding a suitable therapy and drug design for the pandemic and for the biosecurity of humans against the virus in the future.