
Inside the Coronavirus - hayderado
https://www.scientificamerican.com/interactive/inside-the-coronavirus/
======
gdubs
Around the point in the interactive where it shows how the virus swings sugar
molecules around to distract the immune system I paused and marveled at the
tiny universe inside our bodies.

The first time I recall feeling similarly was when I first watched Cosmos as a
kid, and Carl Sagan juxtaposes time lapse photography of cities against the
bustling activity of cells inside the human body.

We walk around every day thinking of ourselves as solid objects in a Newtonian
world, like balls on a billiards table. But when we actually take a minute to
reflect on all of it, it’s clearly so much more complex than that.

~~~
acqq
Then you have to watch these videos too:

[https://xvivo.com/inner-life-of-the-cell/](https://xvivo.com/inner-life-of-
the-cell/)

For example, this looks like a cartoon but it really behaves so (except that
the molecules are too small to have the colors, as in other visualizations):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuk4Pr2i8)

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hirenj
While this might come across as a pedantic point, I don’t think CoV-2 comes in
via membrane fusion, but it is rather endocytosed (i.e. the receptor is pulled
back into the cell, taking the virus with it). This is an important
distinction to make, because this opens the door for other opportunities to
interfere in this process (e.g. stuffing around with actin dynamics).

Of course, this is a pop culture depiction, but I believe that many people
discount how useful such visual summaries are for even people who are deep in
the field, and as such I’d hope that people spend effort sweating the details,
because it does help!

~~~
hirenj
I had no idea there was more to the page because of the weird scrolling on the
site, so I missed the glycan (sugar) stuff, which is my bread and butter.

I think the consensus is that there is not likely any shielding going on with
the glycans (like what you would find with HIV), but there are glycans that
stabilise the ACE2 binding part. Also, people have found glycans on a protein
cleavage region, which I would expect could impart resistance to cleavage (a
predictor I wrote from a few years back correctly predicted those sites).

~~~
aeternum
Seems like this would be much better as a video. It probably took a tons of
effort to put this into a webpage and it was quite buggy and unintuitive.

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acqq
One of very interesting properties of SARS-CoV (2003) and SARS-Cov-2 (2019) is
that they have their "proofreading" replication mechanisms, or in the terms of
people working with computers these viruses have an "error correction device"
active during the copying that allows them to have a relatively long genome
which won't mutate too fast:

NYT interactive April 2020, also a good visualization of some "building
blocks":

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/science/coron...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/03/science/coronavirus-
genome-bad-news-wrapped-in-protein.html)

2015 paper:

[https://www.pnas.org/content/112/30/9436](https://www.pnas.org/content/112/30/9436)

2013 paper:

[https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/j...](https://journals.plos.org/plospathogens/article?id=10.1371/journal.ppat.1003760)

2006 paper:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1458802/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1458802/)

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pfundstein
Does this slow down it's ability to mutate though, potentially allowing for
more effective vaccines?

~~~
acqq
Influenza viruses don't have that mechanism.

That doesn't prevent humanity to have working vaccines each year for the
currently important influenza viruses. The needed research was already done
long ago.

But regarding SARS-CoV-2, it's still too early to say anything for sure, we
have lost the precious time in not learning enough from the properties of the
(2003) SARS-CoV virus, not to mention western world remaining very unprepared
for long after the spreading of SARS-CoV-2 started.

~~~
the_af
What about retroviruses such as HIV, where replication errors are very likely?
It's almost like replication errors are a _feature_ of HIV which makes it
harder to develop a vaccine (of course, most mutations won't be helpful to the
virus, but at least some will).

(I'm not saying SARS-CoV-2 is the same case)

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axilmar
How come, since we know so much, not produce a mechanism that counteracts the
virus? how come we only know how to tell the immune system how to react?

As a programmer, I suddenly got an urge to learn how I can program proteins to
do the stuff I want to do. From reading material around proteins, it seems
they are nothing more than mechanical devices.

~~~
rocha
Take a look at how mRNA vaccines work, and how they came to be. It is still
mind-blowing to me.

~~~
ksk
Its a fairly old concept, but we're still not at the stage where it can be
used in a product for human use. I work in vaccine r&d (though not as a
scientist) and there are many technologies that sound great on paper, but
haven't been shown to work in the real world.

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JoeCoo7
I'm truly amazed. I enjoyed reading it. My understanding of this virus has
increased, but unfortunately it doesn't necessary makes me feel better.

