Posted on 03/26/2020 11:42:07 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
The coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is changing over time.
While scientists are still unsure whether viruses are actually alive (they can’t survive or replicate without the help of another lifeform, but inside one they clearly thrive), they do have DNA or RNA and copy it to make more versions of themselves. And like plants, animals, and bacteria, the new coronavirus will inevitably make mistakes during this process. These errors lead to mutations—changes in genetic material between the new virus and its parent.
All of this might sound unsettling. After all, we’re in the midst of a global crisis as the virus spreads around the world. Having it change on us unpredictably can seem scary. But just because the virus is mutating doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly going to become more dangerous. In fact, experts say, it’s very unlikely that SARS-CoV-2 (as the virus is officially known) will mutate in ways that change how the pandemic plays out.
“The rate at which this virus is mutating or evolving is not unexpected; it’s exactly what we would expect for a virus like this,” says Nathan Grubaugh, a virologist at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut. “All viruses continuously evolve and there shouldn’t be anything alarming about the process in general.”
But there’s something about the idea of mutation that gets under people’s skin, Grubaugh acknowledged in a recent article in the journal Nature Microbiology. Fiction is filled with superheroes and deadly germs that owe their powers to mutations.
“As soon as the word ‘mutation’ comes into the story it means that something grand has happened, either for the better or worse,” he says. “And that’s just not the way that evolution works. We all have mutations. We all are genetically different from our ancestors.”
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
LEARNING FROM THE PAST:
Viruses do mutate at a particularly high rate, especially ones like SARS-CoV-2 that use RNA for their genetic material.
Unlike organisms that use DNA, these viruses don’t have the ability to fix mistakes that happen when they copy their genetic code.
This means that RNA viruses tend to evolve more quickly than other organisms, says Richard Kuhn, a virologist and director of the Purdue Institute of Inflammation, Immunology and Infectious Disease in West Lafayette, Indiana.
However, the bulk of the mutations that appear as a virus spreads are either harmful to the virus itself (meaning it is less likely to survive or replicate) or don’t change how it functions.
Additionally, the two characteristics that are of most concern right now—how contagious the virus is and how harmful it is to its hosts—are controlled by multiple genes, Grubaugh says. Changing these characteristics is a complicated process, and not often the work of a single mutation. So the odds of the virus mutating in such a way that it actually becomes more lethal or contagious over the timescale of weeks, months, or even a couple years aren’t very high.
In past outbreaks of other diseases such as SARS or Ebola, scientists haven’t seen evidence that a particular virus was mutating to become more deadly.
“While there may be some mutations from time to time that arise that do have an epidemiological impact, it’s not very often that we actually find them,” Grubaugh says.
... also... (I was thinking about this the other day)... There are mutations that happen over the natural course of widespread reproduction both within a host, and across the spread between hosts. One thing that I think COULD happen to make progressive strains of the covid19 less dangerous is that the majority of the transmission between hosts are when they are generally contagious, and not nearly as much (my hypothesis) they are suffering from deep lung inflammation and damage. In other words, those virus that mutate and survive are not necessarily going to be those are successful at targeting lung weaknesses, but more just general prevalence.
Yep - majority of mutations highlight recessive traits for the organism doing the mutating.
this SARS has four segments of HIV
and a locus of RNA c/w its unnatural origin.
the important questions unanswered are:
1. how many “recovered” continue to superspread virus?
2. how many “recovered” get easily reinfected by variants
which have mutated? (two scores already)
3. how many of the “recovered” now have diminished/altered
lymphatic/immune systems for the rest of their lives
as planned by those who made this atrocity, and how
many of those will get leukemia, cancer and other
susceptibilities from the PLANNED,
pandemically disseminated, Wuhan Coronavirus?
“Unlike organisms that use DNA, these viruses don’t have the ability to fix mistakes that happen when they copy their genetic code.”
This is wrong.
SARS class ACE2-binding viruses have a proof-reading subunit.
—
The protein nsp15 is a 3’-5’ exoribonuclease which provides extra fidelity to the replication process. The exoribonuclease provides a proofreading function to the complex which the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase lacks. Similarly, proteins nsp7 and nsp8 form a hexadecameric sliding clamp as part of the complex which greatly increases the processivity of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.[46] The coronaviruses require the increased fidelity and processivity during RNA synthesis because of the relatively large genome size in comparison to other RNA viruses.[49]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome-related_coronavirus
errors yield stealth and danger, too
coronaviruses cannot connect to the missing sialic acid site
at the ACE2 binding locus, if it is already lysed off
by the prophylactically used CQ or HCQ or quinine.
Oh, no! Not again!
Hello, my baby...
Organisms mutate to enhance their prospects for survival.
Viruses which kill their hosts dead-end their existence.
Hence they mutate to become milder.
Hey, mutating worked wonders for the Andromeda Strain.
“coronaviruses cannot connect to the missing sialic acid site
at the ACE2 binding locus, if it is already lysed off
by the prophylactically used CQ or HCQ or quinine.”
I meant to ask you where you got this info, it was interesting.
I just came across it - from CDC 2004.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/
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