Revealing the Nature of COVID-19 Virus Pathogen in Nigeria: Towards a Potential Therapeutic Design and Management

Abstract

This paper adopted in silico and bioinformatics scientific approaches in revealing the nature of the COVID-19 coronavirus strain in Nigeria. These was revealed in terms of the physical, chemical and biological nature, as well as the isoelectric point, evolutionary relationship, mutation rate and pathway, molecular weight amongst other attributes which project the coronaviruses mutant strains causing the current global pandemic as very deadly and a threat to humanity. The paper revealed the genetic and thermal stability status of the Nigerian (COVID-19) isolate using instability index, aliphatic index, guanine – cytosine content, hydropathicity, nucleotide diversity, amino acids side chains and half-life of the isolate on in vitro human reticulocyte cells as criteria. The paper also revealed the variations in protein structures, phylogeny, bad angles, bad bonds, C-Beta deviations, Ramachandran outliers and Molprobity scores of the virus pathogen in Nigeria and that of Wuhan China, the global epicenter of the pandemic and deduced strong relationship between the strains confirming their common ancestry and nature. The paper revealed that efforts geared towards the development of suitable therapy and vaccines for the COVID-19 globally has not yet been successful due to the variable attenuation coefficients and the fast rate of the S gene mutations of the coronaviruses mutant strains. Hence, the nature of COVID-19 revealed in this study, is necessary for the identification, design and development of effective treatment.

Keywords

• coronaviruses
• nucleotide sequences
• bioinformatics
• mutation rate
• protein structure