#trna

An international team of researchers including scientists from The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a way to reveal the smallest of malfunctions in the biochemical machinery that makes proteins in our bodies. According to the researchers, these malfunctions, however small, can trigger neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, as well as cancer and developmental disorders. The technique, which works by squeezing molecules through tiny holes in a silicon-based membrane, helps scientists understand how a mutation in a transfer RNA (tRNA) molecule—tRNA is a molecular messenger essential for building proteins—affects the molecule's real-time structure. The study is published in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

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-- Eukaryotes have three forms of RNA polymerase -> RNAP I -> RNAP II -> RNAP III

-- each form transcribes a different type of gene

RNAP I -> product is rRNA -> located in the nucleolus

RNAP II -> products -- mRNA -- snRNA -> located in the nucleoplasm

RNAP III -> products -- 5S rRNA -- tRNA -> located in the nucleoplasm

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I will try using analogy to explain:

DNA is a recipe. However, it's written in a language the cook cannot read. The cook reads RNA. The cook follows all instructions without question.

Every cell in your body has DNA, a translator and a cook.

A virus only has RNA, and no cook.

A virus' only chance of survival is to invade a host with a cook. The more prodigious the cook, the better.

SARS-CoV2 prefers to invade goblet cells (mucous producing) in your nose, throat and lungs (eyes can be infected too). Obviously, the nose is the first encountered.

Once the virus injects its RNA into your goblet cells, the cook begins rapidly producing more virus which is continually shed into your mucous. It is swept along by cilia into your throat and lungs, where it infects more and more goblet cells (another example of exponential growth). But it is also being expelled out into the environment. If you are coughing, sneezing, panting, shouting or singing, you are expelling large amounts of virus at greater distances. As well as driving it deeper into your lungs. This mechanism is the reason testing looks to the amount of identifiable virus in your "snot" or "spit." It also explains why the deep nasal swab PCR test gives less false negatives in asymptomatic or presymptomatic people. It is where the virus first sets up shop, so the viral load captured is higher.

Did you know 100 million SARS-COV2 can fit on the head of a pin? That's enough to infect 1,000 people. This is a very tiny virus. Just imagine how many are being exhaled over a dinner table somewhere tonight.

Because this virus is novel (never before identified as an invader), your immune system doesn't recognize it immediately and mount a defense.

Additionally, the virus is stealing the energy and ingredients required to make what you need to stay healthy.

Eventually, you begin to notice the "symptoms" of the invasion and immune responses begin.

But for the 3 days prior to you noticing, you are a virus factory propagating an alien invasion of humanity.

Correctly washing your hands and keeping your hands away from your face lowers the transmission rate via touch. (True for colds and flu as well.) Keeping your distance lessens the chance of virus entering into the body. Wearing a mask lowers the viral load being expelled and lowers the viral load being inhaled from the environment. A smaller number of people in any enclosed space lowers the viral load in the environment.

All current data point to viral load (how much virus invades you) being a primary factor in severe disease and death. That's the reason for the mitigation tactics recommended.

Remdesivir slows down the cook pumping out fresh virus.

In order to destroy the virus, we would have to destroy your cells hosting the virus.

A successful immune response clears the virus without damaging too many of your own cells.

Monoclonal antibodies (Regeneron) are copies of someone else's successfull immune response.

A small percentage of those invaded will die. A larger percentage will require ICU stays. An even larger percentage will require hospitalization. The vast majority will suffer illness at home.

If only 0.5 % of the US population dies due to COVID-19, that equates to approximately 1,655,000 dead.

We are currently (11/17/20) at about 250,000 dead.

The updated modeling now predicts a 75% rate of persons with some sort of effective immunity to achieve herd immunity. That equates to about 248 million of us having been infected or successfully vaccinated.

Currently we believe there is no more than 50 million of us with any sort of immunity.

That leaves just under 200 million more of us left to go.

The virus is at war for its very survival. And, like everything else, it will either adapt or die. The influenza virus has managed to adapt. So our vaccines have to adapt yearly. The small pox virus did not adapt. It no longer exists outside the laboratory.

Every encounter with a host gives this virus a chance to adapt again (the virus adapted between China and Italy to be more infectious).

Allowing unmitigated spread is an unfathomable roll of the evolutionary dice.

And we humans have shown ourselves unable to adapt to the most basic mitigation strategies or vaccination protocols.

May the odds ever be in your favor.

26 - April - 2020

Ribosomes and Transfer RNA (tRNA)

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Hello Everyone!

I’m starting to regain my study productivity after the mid-semester break so I’m hoping to upload more often for the second half of the semester. I actually found this topic of ribosomes and translation of mRNA to the amino acid chain to be really interesting so hopefully that will help me remember this topic better.