Another interesting thing about the current coronavirus from “Mutations can reveal how the coronavirus moves—but they’re easy to overinterpret” article from sciencemag.org :

“Over the length of its 30,000-base-pair genome, SARS-CoV-2 accumulates an average of about one to two mutations per month, Andrew Rambaut says. “It’s about two to four times slower than the flu.””

Since the coronavirus mutates slower, this allows researchers to sequence the viral genome much easier. It also allows researchers to make connections between different people who get infected by the coronavirus.

According to “UCSC genome browser posts the coronavirus genome” article (University of California- Santa Cruz, link eurekalert.org) :

the coronavirus genome consisting of a single-strand RNA has been analyzed using a Genome Browser that provides a visual representation of the coronavirus genome. The Genome Browser allows researchers to zoom in and out of the genome and they have discovered that the coronavirus has approximately 10 individual genes and comprises  29,903 base pairs.  The researchers have discovered that amongst the ten individual genes, the largest is the spike protein on the virus’s outer membrane which the virus uses to snag onto human cells and then enter the human cell to make more virus cells. Scientists are working on using CRISPR* to see if they can target specific sequences  in the virus’s genome and understand how certain genes work or how to make certain genes inactive in the virus which might lead to the virus being less virulent (less severe or harmful).

“UCSC genome browser posts the coronavirus genome” Feb. 7, 2020 article.

*[CRISPR is a tool that allows scientists to target a specific genetic sequence and then make a cut in the DNA or genome. Some uses for CRISPR currently are scientists  working on using CRISPR to manipulate specific genes such as using it to knock out a gene (making it inactive) and possibly repair a mutation by replacing the mutated gene with a healthy one.]

• This reply was modified 4 years, 8 months ago by Janus.

Dear Anita

I just plugged the numbers (32,000/3.2 billion) into a scientific calculator and the result is 0.00001. So the coronavirus is 0.00001 times smaller than the human genome.  I hope that a vaccine is developed sooner as well because quarantine is hurting the economy a lot with businesses closing down and stock market declining. Coronaviruses typically affect birds and mammals such as humans (bats are mammals as well) and they can cause diseases ranging from the common cold to the current coronavirus. Coronaviruses often cause illness during winter and early spring months. According to medicalnewstoday.com article, humans who catch a cold due to coronavirus may catch the same one again in four months because coronavirus antibodies (help fight infection in a person’s immune system) do not last for a long time. In addition, the person’s immune system antibodies may be ineffective against a different strain of coronavirus because the coronavirus is a RNA virus that can mutate.  The World Health Organization says that people over the age of sixty and people with weakened immune systems have more likely chance of getting severe symptoms of the current coronavirus.

“What to know about coronaviruses” March 23, 2020; medicalnewstoday.com

The current coronavirus breaks into human cells by using a spike protein (S-protein) that is on the outer membrane of the virus cell and the coronavirus uses the spike protein like a key to fit into a doorknob of the ACE2 receptor in respiratory cells allowing the coronavirus to enter the human body. This was discovered by scientists studying how coronavirus enters the human body, discovery in Feb. 19 and published in March 4th in the journal Science.

That is why the new drug APNO1 that Chinese scientists are working on may be helpful with combatting the coronavirus since the APNO1 drug may help block the virus from getting to the ACE2 receptors in the respiratory cells and make the virus less virulent.

“Scientists figure out how new coronavirus breaks into human cells” livescience.com

Dear Anita

Thank you for wishing me well, hope you are having a good week so far. I spent yesterday doing some spring cleaning around the house. I have been following updates on the coronavirus and it is very fascinating. I am also learning Italian and French from friends and I find it lots of fun. Here are some interesting things that I have found about the coronavirus:

Chinese scientists in Wuhan tested the samples of nine patients affected by the current coronavirus and they found that in these nine patients the coronavirus genomes were similar to a coronavirus that was originally found in bats making them think that the current coronavirus may have come from bats and this was confirmed by researchers in England and France (Genomics Education Programme from England article). The SARS-COV-1 (sars disease) in 2003-2004, which shares 79.5 % of its genome with the current coronavirus (SARS-COV-2) was discovered by scientists to have come from bats, so currently scientists believe that the current coronavirus that is spreading likely originated from a mutation in a coronavirus that was originally from the bat population and spread to humans. Scientists also think that once the current coronavirus spread to humans, there was no other intermediate species that facilitated the spread, but that the current coronavirus became widespread due to human to human contact. According to CNN, the reason why humans are coming into contact with bats and getting the current coronavirus and spreading it to others via human interactions is that people are cutting down trees for homes in forests where bats live and that is making the bat population come into closer contact with people.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says that the current coronavirus is not airborne because the droplets when an infected person coughs or sneezes are too heavy to remain in the air and they fall onto surfaces where if a person touches the surface and then touches their face with their hands there is a chance for the coronavirus to enter the body.

Why the current coronavirus is not genetically made in a laboratory:

Scientists discovered that the coronavirus spike protein on the virus’s outer membrane was so effective at binding to the ACE2 receptors on the human respiratory cells that scientists think that the virus likely resulted as a product of natural evolution rather genetic engineering.

The evidence for natural evolution is further supported by the coronavirus’s molecular structure because scientists discovered that the coronavirus structure resembled that of the coronavirus that originally affected bats and differed from the known coronaviruses. The current coronavirus is an RNA virus and RNA viruses can mutate, if it was manufactured in a laboratory it would not be able to mutate itself, the fact that it can mutate its genome points that natural evolution may be at play to select for traits that help the virus spread. In addition, the coronavirus shares similarities to the sars virus that originated from bats which makes scientists think that the coronavirus may have came from bats and then spread to humans. (ScienceDaily article).

I learned some positivity in Italian and French:

Che la salute benedica la tua vita e la pace riempia la tua mente e la positività riempia il tuo cuore per aiutarti nei momenti stressanti della tua vita

“May health bless your life and peace fill your mind and positivity fill your heart to help you in the stressful moments of your life”

tu es être de lumière , tu es magnifique
ne laisse personne te dires contraire

French translation:

“you are light, you are beautiful
don’t let anyone tell you otherwise”

Dear Anita

Hope you are having a good weekend. It is currently sunny here in New Jersey. I started planting some flowers in the garden and soaking up the positivity of the sunshine. I am adopting to the pace of nature, allowing my inner light to shine like the sun, dancing to the music of my heart like the wind and working on establishing my self-confidence like a tree. Here is something that I found interesting that combines my love for nature and science:

Some interesting things:

The moon has no light of its own, it reflects the sunlight. Sometimes the sunlight is quite strong and as it shines, the moon reflects a yellowish-orange glow. The moon sometimes is in the sky in the early hours of dawn as a small light whitish semicircle before the day breaks and I think that the colors of the sky are the sun rising. As the sun rises, the moon fades away. As the hours of the night pass, the moon seems to become more whiter in its glow, I think when the moon first rises it is faintly yellow-orange because the sun has just recently set and as the night progresses the moon becomes more whiter as the sun sets below the horizon. the moon seems the brightest white in the hours of 12am when the sun is below the horizon and directly shining it’s light that is reflected by the moon. As the sun rises in the sky as the day progresses the moon fades away because it has no light of its own and it is the sunlight that gives the moon the light.

In addition, sunlight is all of the color wavelengths of visible light combined together so it’s actual color is white. If you view the sunlight through a prism, you will see the color wavelengths of the visible spectrum. However, the sun appears yellow because people view it from the Earth and the Earth’s atmosphere reflects some of the color and it is filtered through the lens of the atmosphere so depending on where the sun is throughout the day, we see different colors of yellow, red, or orange.

The Earth’s atmosphere changes the color of the sunlight that people see because it scatters the the light waves of the sun in a process called Rayleigh Scattering. The Earth’s atmosphere scatters the violet and blue light in the visible light spectrum. Violet has the shortest wavelength on the visible light spectrum and it is scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere because the short wavelengths of light do not have much length to travel through Earth’s atmosphere. The blue light is scattered by the Earth’s atmosphere as well and as the blue light is scattered by the molecules of Earth’s atmosphere, this scattering of the blue light gives the sky its blue color.

At sunset and sunrise, the sun appears orange or slightly red because people view the sun through a thick layer of the Earth’s atmosphere which scatters most of the shorter wavelengths of the visible spectrum. Likewise, at midday or noon when the Earth’s atmosphere is the thinnest, the sun appears closest to its actual color which is white and may have a slight yellowish tint.

The moon appears more yellowish-orange when it is closer to the horizon because the moon has no natural light of its own and it reflects the sunlight so when the sun is closer to the horizon such as at sunset and the sun is reddish-orange, it casts its light on the moon making it have that color. However, when the sun sinks below the horizon, the Earth’s atmosphere is thinner and less of the visible light is scattered so the sunlight is white (which combines all the colors of the visible spectrum) and when it casts its light on the moon as the moon rises higher in the sky and the sun sets, the moon appears white.

Hope this makes sense!

Science is fascinating and there’s always something interesting to learn.

Thoughtco.com article “Why the sun looks yellow when it’s not”