FIGURE 5.

Gibbs free energy of binding and Kd (affinity constant) for enhanced ACE2 binding and infectivity of SARS‐CoV‐2 variants. A schematic representation illustrating how the greater affinity of SARS‐CoV‐2 variants lowers the concentration of virus particles required to complete the passage across the mucosal barrier and bind with epithelial cell–bound ACE2 and achieve successful infectivity. The schematic also portrays the efficiency of variant (▲) spread throughout bystander cells driven by repeated thermodynamic spontaneity as a consequence of the availability of Gibbs free energy (ΔG) associated with viral target binding. Wild type SARS‐CoV‐2 is schematically represented by the circular virus