A: We love this brilliant series of illustrations on how the coronavirus takes hold in the body as well as potential drug and vaccine targets. Here is a quick summary of what you will see.
-The virus enters cells through the ACE2 receptor and then replicates and breaks out—>Once it breaks out, it can either die, infect other cells, or get exhaled into the air
-Potential drug (therapeutic targets) mechanisms: blocking the virus from entering cells, stopping the virus from replicating and spreading, making the virus defective so that it doesn’t spread, and/or dampening the immune response to the virus
-Potential vaccines strategies: Use weakened virus, inactivated virus or pieces of virus to generate immune response; or, employ genetic mapping to insert viral segments into DNA, RNA, or a safe virus to ultimately generate an immune response
Happy reading and we hope all of you have a safe Sunday….
…And of course, a very Happy Father’s Day to all the father figures out there!
#StayHome #StaySafe #coronavirus #SciAm
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