Complexity in SARS-CoV-2 genome data: Price theory of mutant isolates

SARS-CoV-2 is a highly virulent and deadly RNA virus causing the Covid-19 pandemic and several deaths across the world. The pandemic is so fast that any concrete theory of sudden widespread of this disease is still not known. In this work, we studied and analyzed a large number of publicly available SARS-CoV-2 genomes across the world using the multifractal approach. The mutation events in the isolates obey the Markov process and exhibit very high mutational rates, which occur in six specific genes and highest inorf1abgene, leading to virulent nature.f(α) analysis indicated that the isolates are highly asymmetric (left-skewed), revealing the richness of complexity and dominance by large fluctuations in genome structure organization. The values ofH_qandD_qare found to be significantly large, showing heterogeneous genome structure self-organization, strong positive correlation in organizing the isolates, and quite sensitive to fluctuations in and around it. We then present multiple-isolates hosts-virus interaction models, and derived Price equation for the model. The phase plane analysis of the model showedasymptotic stabilitytype bifurcation. The competition among the mutant isolates drives the trade-off of the dominant mutant isolates, otherwise confined to the present hosts.