biochemistry of the corona virus

A virus

A virus is recognized to be a microscopic organism that can only be seen with an electron microscope!

It has no cell structure hence made by coiled stand of RNA or DNA enclosed in a protein coat.

Virus is seen to be a non living thing outside the cell as it forms crystals but within a cell it reproduce & becomes a living organism. (A virus is confused itself!)

Corona viruses are a group of related viruses that cause diseases in mammals and birds.

In humans, corona viruses cause respiratory tract infections that are typically mild, such as some cases of the common cold. Symptoms vary in other species: in chickens, they cause an upper respiratory tract disease, while in cows and pigs they cause diarrhea.

There are yet to be vaccines or antiviral drugs to prevent or treat human corona virus infections.

Corona viruses were first discovered in the 1960s.
The earliest ones discovered were an infectious bronchitis virus in chickens and two in human patients with the common cold (later named human coronavirus 229E and human coronavirus OC43).

Other members of this family have since been identified, including SARS-CoV in 2003, HCoV NL63 in 2004, HKU1 in 2005, MERS-CoV in 2012, and SARS-CoV-2 (formerly known as 2019-nCoV) in 2019. Most of these have involved serious respiratory tract infections.

A 55-year-old individual from Hubei province in China may have been the first person to have contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by the new corona virus spreading across the globe. That case dates back to Nov. 17, 2019, according to the South Morning China Post.

That's more than a month earlier than doctors noted cases in Wuhan, China, which is in Hubei province, at the end of December 2019. At the time, authorities suspected the virus stemmed from something sold at a wet market in the city. However, it's now clear that early in what s now a pandemic, some infected people had no connection to the market. That included one of the earliest cases from Dec. 1, 2019 in an individual who had no link to that seafood market, researchers reported Jan. 20 in the journal The Lancet.

Scientists now suspect this corona virus, SARS-CoV-2, originated in a bat and somehow hopped to another animal, possibly the pangolin, which then passed it on to humans. The disease is now spreading between people without any animal intermediary.

Now, doctors and scientists are trying to trace the virus back to where it originated to learn more about its spread. If, for instance, doctors can find the earliest cases, they may be able to identify the animal host where the virus lurks

Human to human transmission of corona viruses is primarily thought to occur among close contacts via respiratory droplets generated by sneezing and coughing. The interaction of the corona virus spike protein with its complement host cell receptor is central in determining the tissue tropism, infectivity, and species range of the virus. The SARS corona virus, for example, infects human cells by attaching to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor.

Since most transitions are by a host coughing or sneezing, everyone around the globe is all crazy about having a nose mask on.

But is that really a solution?

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