STRUCTURE, FUNCTION AND EVOLUTION OF CORONA VIRUS SPIKE PROTEINS

What does Corona Virus Mean?

Coronavirus derives from the Latin which means Crown, as it is in shape of a sphere but covered in spikes, which resembles a crown. It has emerged from the Wuhan in China.

As it continues to spread around the world, scientists are striving to develop ways of fighting this previously unknown threat. Computer Modelling is being used to track and predict its transmission, while virologists are attempting to engineer a vaccine while others are seeking drug treatments that can help those who fall ill with the infection.

Coronavirus belong to a large group of viruses that can infect both humans and animals and can occasionally jump the species barrier. But while the first cases likely occurred in people who had close contact with infected animals, it seems that most new cases from this 2019-nCoV are being passed human to human. Some of the most common and challenging diseases are caused by coronaviruses. One of the viruses that causes the Common Cold, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) outbreaks were also caused by coronaviruses.

The Human Virus has been found to share many genetic similarities to two coronaviruses in Bats and Snakes.Coronaviruse typically target the upper respiratory tract, causing a range of illnesses which can potentially include pneumonia and also affect the central nervous system causing long-term neurological damage. It contains prickly shell is a string of single-stranded genetic code called RNA. In some people immune systems allows to carry the virus with few or mild symptoms. Others, however, can suffer the opposite – heavy symptoms that cause them to sneeze and cough a lot, and so spread the disease more to those around them.

General Precautions: Wearing  Face Masks, Hand-Washing and Stringent Quarantine Procedures can help to limit the spread.

Protein in Corona Virus:

New technology is making it easier to diagnose specific viruses in the first place, which will help efforts to not only contain the outbreak, but also make it easier to understand how it spreads. Scientists are trying to develop new rapid diagnostic tools that can be used. The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released a DNA based diagnostic kit for the new virus that can produce results in around four hours, but needs expensive laboratory equipment to work. The number of Biotechnology companies and Researchers are reportedly working on faster approaches that do not require specialized equipment.

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are viruses which is  enveloped with a positive sense, single-stranded RNA genome. It  also infect humans and cause disease to varying degrees, from upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs) resembling the common cold, to lower respiratory tract infections (LRTIs) such as bronchitis, pneumonia, and even severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) .In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that Human Coronaviruses (HCoVs) are implicated in both URTIs and LRTIs, validating the importance of corona viral research as agents of severe respiratory illnesses.

The corona viral genome encodes four major structural proteins: the spike (S) protein, nucleocapsid (N) protein, membrane (M) protein, and the envelope (E) protein are required to produce a structurally complete viral particle .

    

Protein-protein interactions: Intraviral

• Membrane and envelope proteins
• Envelope and envelope proteins
• Nucleocapsid and envelope proteins
• Spike and envelope proteins  

        Protein-protein interactions: Host-viral

• The necessary machinery was lacked by viruses  which is self replicate and are dependent on the host cell machinery for propagation. The host cell replication machinery is  exploited by numerous viruses to establish an infection by way of host-viral Protein-protein interactions.