NYT: What We’re Afraid to Say About Ebola(Last sentence)
If we wait for vaccines and new drugs to arrive to end the Ebola epidemic, instead of taking major action now, we risk the disease’s reaching from West Africa to our own backyards.
I think that last sentence is why our gov’t finally started to pay attention to the outbreak. I imagine someone had to kick the ditherer-in-chief’s backside. That someone could have been CDC Director Friedman, who just experienced a wake-up call from his recent visit to Ebola hell in West Africa.
I stumbled across this slide presentation from a post-doc named Amy L Hartman who spent time at the CDC. I haven't researched her specifically but found slide number 15 of her presentation very interesting.
Ebola Virus Pathogenesis: Lessons learned from my post-doc experience at CDC
Notice the "early symptoms" of Ebola. Cough.
I also ran across a good summary of the virus' replication and transcription process. While reading this struck me:
Filovirus replication and transcription(Future Virology Mar 2007 via NIH)(Pg 2) Filoviruses encode seven structural proteins (Figure 1B & C). While five of these proteins, the nucleoprotein (NP), the viral proteins (VP) 35 and 40, the glycoprotein (GP) and the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (L) are counterparts of proteins found in all NNS RNA viruses, VP24 appears to be unique to filoviruses, and a protein similar to VP30 is only described for the pneumoviruses [8].
(Pg 6)Besides its function as a transcription activator, EBOV VP30 is involved in nucleocapsid assembly by binding to NP-derived inclusion bodies [21]. VP30 is a P that contains a zinc-binding domain and forms hexamers [57–60]. Phosphorylation of VP30 is presumed to be an important regulatory factor by determining whether the protein is involved in transcription activation or assembly [57].
(Pg 7) Besides filoviruses, the only other NNS RNA viruses possessing a fourth nucleocapsid protein are the pneumoviruses. The fourth nucleocapsid protein of respiratory syncytial virus, M2–1, acts in a later stage of transcription as a processivity factor [49].
Things that make me go, "hmmmmmm." A novel protein involved in the Ebola nucleocapsid that is approximated only by pneumoviruses (viruses that cause respiratory infections).
Maybe I just think too much.