Impact of temperature on the affinity of SARS-CoV-2 Spike for ACE2
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The seasonal nature in the outbreaks of respiratory viral infections with increased transmission during low temperatures has been well established. The current COVID-19 pandemic makes no exception, and temperature has been suggested to play a role on the viability and transmissibility of SARS-CoV-2. The receptor binding domain (RBD) of the Spike glycoprotein binds to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) to initiate viral fusion. Studying the effect of temperature on the receptor-Spike interaction, we observed a significant and stepwise increase in RBD-ACE2 affinity at low temperatures, resulting in slower dissociation kinetics. This translated into enhanced interaction of the full Spike to ACE2 receptor and higher viral attachment at low temperatures. Interestingly, the RBD N501Y mutation, present in emerging variants of concern (VOCs) that are fueling the pandemic worldwide, bypassed this requirement. This data suggests that the acquisition of N501Y reflects an adaptation to warmer climates, a hypothesis that remains to be tested.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".