Outside the host, viruses will eventually lose their ability to infect cells due to conformational changes that occur to proteins on the viral capsid. In order to undergo a conformational change, these proteins require energy to activate the chemical reaction that leads to the conformational change. In this study, data from the literature is used to calculate the energy required for viral inactivation for a variety of different viruses by means of the Arrhenius equation. We find that some viruses (rhinovirus, poliovirus, human immunodeficiency virus, Alkhumra hemorrhagic fever virus, and hepatitis A virus) have high inactivation energies, indicative of breaking of a chemical double bond. We also find that several viruses (respiratory syncytial virus, poliovirus, and norovirus) have nonlinear Arrhenius plots, suggesting that there is more than a single pathway for inactivation of these viruses.

在宿主之外，由于病毒衣壳上的蛋白质发生构象变化，病毒最终会失去感染细胞的能力。为了经历构象变化，这些蛋白质需要能量来激活导致构象变化的化学反应。在这项研究中，来自文献的数据用于通过 Arrhenius 方程计算各种不同病毒的病毒灭活所需的能量。我们发现一些病毒（鼻病毒、脊髓灰质炎病毒、人类免疫缺陷病毒、Alkhumra 出血热病毒和甲型肝炎病毒）具有高灭活能量，表明化学双键断裂。我们还发现几种病毒（呼吸道合胞病毒、脊髓灰质炎病毒和诺如病毒）具有非线性 Arrhenius 图，