(Newswire.net— October 11, 2020) —
We live in the “smart” era with connectable and intractable technology such as smart vehicles, smart phones, and smart houses. It seems that the Coronavirus is a result of smart evolution too, thus it is hard to find a cure.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, equally dangerous conspiracy theories have spread along with the dangerous infection – one of which was the rumor that SARS-Cov-2 was made in a laboratory, and that it was deliberately released into the world.
The fact that such claims are meaningless was shown by the scientific work shared by the Serbian scientist Isidora Stanković, who lives and works in the USA.
On her Facebook page, she briefly explained the discovery of the mechanism that the new coronavirus uses to infect our organism. The paper is published in the magazine “Cell”.
“The primary way our immune system detects a foreign body is through interferon proteins, Dr. Stankovic” wrote in a post on her Facebook page.
“When a virus infects our body, interferons are created and, like a policeman, signal to our immune system to activate other defense mechanisms. Studies have shown that the most severe cases of coronavirus are characterized by complete loss of interferon and hence the inability of the immune system to react,” she further explained.
Dr. Stankovic explained that viruses have long attacked our RNA during infection in various ways: polioviruses prevent the translation of our RNA into proteins, cytomegaloviruses prevent the transfer of our proteins through cells, and the influenza virus prevents key RNA modifications. All these viral strategies are known and for them, there are more or less successful therapies that target these specific functions.
COVID-19, however, uses all three attack strategies simultaneously, unlike the others, which have just one way of targeting protein production.
“COVID-19 has 3 ways to destroy our proteins at the same time, i.e. in this case our interferons,” wrote Dr. Stankovic.
The research from Caltech points out that COVID-19 prevents the synthesis of interferon, the cop of our immune system, by preventing both RNA modifications and RNA translation into proteins and protein transfer through cells at the same time. This results in the loss of interferon and ultimately contributes to our immune system not knowing that the virus is in the body and is then unable to respond.
What does this simply mean?
Most viruses target our immune system with strategies A, B, or C (pictured), which makes it easier to make therapies against them. COVID-19, however, uses all 3 strategies at the same time, making antiviral drugs to prevent infection very difficult.
“As someone who studies RNA, this is a completely fascinating discovery… I haven’t seen a smarter virus recently. This absolutely proves that the virus is a product of evolution, and not “made in the laboratory” as no technology for RNA modification could produce these 3 results at the same time,” Stanković wrote.
Scientists overall agree with this theory, however, there are virology experts who claim, although evolution does explain this “smart” change, it takes millenniums for a virus to evolve naturally in such a way, which implies that the only way to speed up the process would be in a laboratory.