Decoded: How Covid virus makes itself more infectious

Scientists have uncovered a cunning strategy that SARSCoV2 the virus that causes Covid19 uses to increase its infectivityThe team at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne EPFL in Switzerland focused on the viruss notorious spike protein which allows it to enter and infect human cellsUpon infecting a host SARSCoV2 manipulates its cellular machinery to modify an enzyme that then turbocharges spikes ability to invade other cells The enzyme abbreviated as ZDHHC20 normally tags proteins with a little fat molecule that changes the way they workBut upon infection the virus takes over the ZDHHC20 enzyme revealed the research published in the journal Nature CommunicationsIn our previous work we discovered the enzyme that modifies the SARSCoV2 spike protein it adds lipids to it and this is essential for the virus to fuse with target cells said Gisou van der Goot at EPFLs School of Life SciencesWhat we now show is that the virus actually triggers an optimisation of the enzyme by inducing a change in the transcription of its gene van der Goot addedAnalysing the effects of SARSCoV2 on the gene zdhhc20 the researchers found that the virus triggers a change in its transcriptional start site the part of a gene where the process of reading it into a protein beginsStudying both cells in the lab and live organisms they confirmed that this transcriptional change produces an enzyme with 67 additional amino acids This is enough to increase its lipidadding activity on spike 37 times leading to a heavily enhanced viral infectivityThe team also used metabolic labelling Western blotting and immunofluorescence to visualise and quantify proteins and get a comprehensive view of the viruss manipulative tacticsDigging deeper the researchers found that this change in the transcriptional start of genes seems to be something cells normally do in response to stresses or challenges in the case of the study chemically induced colitisWhat this means is that SARSCoV2 hijacks a preexisting cell damage response pathway to generate more infectious virusesThe discovery highlights SARSCoV2s tactics to boost its infectivity offering a blueprint for potential treatments and suggests that other viruses might use similar strategies of coopting host defencesAdditionally the findings indicate that the cellular response the virus leverages could be a general reaction to various stresses which expands the studys findings beyond viral infectionThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever