ArticleComputational and structural biotechnology journal2023
Functional evolution of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein: Maintaining wide host spectrum and enhancing infectivity via surface charge of spike protein.
Article in Computational and structural biotechnology journal, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Nondestructive tracking of viral infections by viral protein-initiated fluorescent sensors.Journal of virology · 2026Article
- Analysis of the Relationship Between the Charge Increment of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein and Evolution.Viruses · 2025Article
- Broad-Spectrum Antiviral Styrene Maleic-Acid Copolymer Lipid Particle Nanodiscs for pH-Responsive Irreversible Virus Inactivation.Biomacromolecules · 2025Article
- Decoding the cross-immune pressure: Dengue's role in SARS-CoV-2 evolution.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- Evolution of SARS-CoV-2 spike trimers towards optimized heparan sulfate cross-linking and inter-chain mobility.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- The effects of amino acid substitution of spike protein and genomic recombination on the evolution of SARS-CoV-2.Frontiers in microbiology · 2023Review
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
The SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes the COVID-19, is rapidly accumulating mutations to adapt to the hosts. We collected SARS-CoV-2 sequence data from the end of 2019 to January 2023 to analyze for their evolutionary features during the pandemic. We found that most of the SARS-CoV-2 genes are undergoing negative purifying selection, while the spike protein gene (S-gene) is undergoing rapid positive selection. From the original strain to the alpha, delta and omicron variant types, the Ka/Ks of the S-gene increases, while the Ka/Ks within one variant type decreases over time. During the evolution, the codon usage did not evolve towards optimal translation and protein expression. In contrast, only S-gene mutations showed a remarkable trend on accumulating more positive charges. This facilitates the infection via binding human ACE2 for cell entry and binding furin for cleavage. Such a functional evolution emphasizes the survival strategy of SARS-CoV-2, and indicated new druggable target to contain the viral infection. The nearly fully positively-charged interaction surfaces indicated that the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 virus may approach a limit.
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