By: Chanh Phan
To quote Katherine J. Wu, “There are more viruses than stars in the universe.” There are an infinite number of viruses on Earth, but the reason why it appears that only a few out of billions affect humans is that each virus is engineered in a way where it only affects a certain aspect of a species. In the beginning of the Covid - 19 epidemic, not much was known about it. However with a solid foundation about the fundamentals of a virus, biochemists were able to engineer a vaccine. But still, the vaccine it’s still in its early stages and the virus is mutating. The Coronavirus is now probably the first thing to pop into peoples mind when one says the word virus, but how does a virus really work and how do they mutate?
To understand how a virus works, one must understand as to what a virus actually is. To give a brief description, according to the National Human Genome Research Institute, a virus is a complex collection of organic matter that has the ability to replicate itself, but not alone. A virus consists of an outer shell made of protein, a collection of genetic code, either DNA or RNA, and enzymes that allow replication and manipulation of the genetic material. As stated earlier, viruses are not able to replicate by themselves. In order to do so, viruses must infect healthy cells and use the components of said cell in order to replicate itself. A virus will either give a piece of its genetic material or will make the cell take in the entire virus itself. A cell has components which allow it to duplicate itself and a virus uses those components to duplicate. At the end of the process, the cell does not survive. So overall, a virus invades healthy cells in order to duplicate itself, and once the virus kills the cell, it moves on to the next.
As heard in the media, there are different variations of strands of Covid-19, which is the virus mutating. As stated earlier, there is a process by which a virus will duplicate itself and it will do this over and over until a vaccine prevents it. Overtime, there is eventually an error when it comes to the copying of genetic information, and this creates a different yet similar virus. There is a certain amount of time when our body begins to develop antibodies against the virus, and what the mutation causes the antibodies to work against the first virus, but will not be effective against the second. The antibodies are made in such a way where they only respond to what was there first and of the utmost importance. When it comes to making a vaccine, biochemists make it in a way in which it targets the most predominant strand of the virus and then proceed to the mutations. Overall, mutations in a virus are just “copying error” during the process of duplication, and what this means for a vaccine is that not much really changes other than that once the main one is dealt with, they move on to the others.
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