Why and How Coronavirus Has Evolved to Be Uniquely Contagious, with Uniquely Successful Stable Vaccines (2107.07047v1)

Abstract: Spike proteins, 1200 amino acids, are divided into two nearly equal parts, S1 and S2. We review here phase transition theory, implemented quantitatively by thermodynamic scaling. The theory explains the evolution of Coronavirus extremely high contagiousness caused by a few mutations from CoV2003 to CoV2019 identified among hundreds in S1. The theory previously predicted the unprecedented success of spike-based vaccines. Here we analyze impressive successes by McClellan et al., 2020, in stabilizing their original S2P vaccine to Hexapro. Hexapro has expanded the two proline mutations of S2P, 2017, to six combined proline mutations in S2. Their four new mutations are the result of surveying 100 possibilities in their detailed structure-based context Our analysis, based on only sparse publicly available data, suggests new proline mutations could improve the Hexapro combination to Octapro or beyond.