Shape of coronavirus affects its spread, study finds

Now, a global team of researchers, including scientists from Queen's University in Canada and the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) in Japan, has simulated how different elliptical shapes affect the way these virus particles rotate in the liquid, affecting the ease with which the virus spreads degree

Professor Elliott Freed, head of the Mechanics and Materials Unit at OIST, said: "When coronavirus particles are inhaled, these particles move through the passages of the nose and lungs

The specific type of motion the scientists simulated is called the rotational diffusivity, which determines how fast particles (in the case of coronaviruses, droplets of saliva) rotate as they move through a fluid

"If the particles spin too much, they might not have enough time to interact with the cell to infect the cell, and if they spin too little, they might not interact in the necessary way," explained Professor Fried

In this study, the scientists simulated rotating prolate and oblate ellipsoids

The scientists also made the model the most realistic, adding spiked proteins to the ellipsoid surface

Here, the scientists modeled the spike proteins in a simpler way—each represented by a sphere on the surface of an ellipsoid

"We then calculated the arrangement of these spikes by assuming that each ellipsoid-shaped surface contains the same charge," explained Dr.

In their model, the researchers found that the more a particle differs from its spherical shape, the slower it spins

The model is still simplistic, the researchers acknowledge, but it brings us one step closer to understanding the transmission properties of the coronavirus and helps identify one of the key factors in its infection success

Journal Reference:

1. MA Kanso, M.