CoV2Research - May2020 - 4

Can Scientists Outwit
Clever Coronavirus?
There is still much to learn about the virus that has brought the
world to a halt.
Lauren Tanabe
A handful of months ago, in Wuhan, China, a virus
mutated just enough to make the jump from animals to humans. Now there are more than 3 million
infection cases across the globe, with over onethird of those in the U.S., the current epicenter of
the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. An invisible parcel of
genetic material surrounded by a lipid shell, it has
quickly and adeptly infiltrated the population, our
naive immune systems scrambling, sometimes flailing. Most of daily life is canceled. City streets are
empty. Disinfectants and paper products are hot
commodities. Weddings, funerals, graduations-all
postponed indefinitely.

higher than their cellular hosts and even than DNA
viruses. When it comes to SARS-CoV-2, its closest
wild relative is found in bats, which suggests it may
have jumped directly to humans.
While we've eradicated and tamed many communicable diseases, since 1980, the number of outbreaks
per year has more than tripled. This is partly because
there are more people on the planet; the population
is nearly double what it was 50 years ago. This is also
influenced by our close proximity to livestock. And
then there is our interconnectedness. We can get
nearly anywhere in the world in a matter of a day or
two, and this means that viruses can, too. So despite
our advances, we're more vulnerable than ever to
quickly evolving microbes.

This isn't the first time we've endured outbreaks
(and it won't be the last). There were the flus of
1918, 1957, and 1968; SARS; MERS; and Ebola. The
culprits, like the coronavirus, were all pathogenic RNA viruses, and they were all zoonotic. One
study claims these viruses are responsible for 2-3
new human diseases discovered each year. That of
course doesn't include the ones that fly under the
radar. The success of these viruses lies in their high
mutation rate that comes from hasty, error-prone
replication, with mutability several magnitudes

The coronavirus that became
a catastrophe
There are six known coronaviruses that infect humans. Four of these, OC43, HKU1, NL63, and 229E,
cause annoying cold-like symptoms. Then there is
the more menacing MERS (Middle East respiratory
syndrome) and SARS (or SARS-classic, severe acute

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.110308.120248 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18319742/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18319742/ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2012-7 https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25416679/ https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev.ecolsys.110308.120248

CoV2Research - May2020

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