4 ms·

While this might come across as a pedantic point, I don’t think CoV-2 comes in via membrane fusion, but it is rather endocytosed (i.e. the receptor is pulled ba

by hirenj 6y ago

While this might come across as a pedantic point, I don’t think CoV-2 comes in via membrane fusion, but it is rather endocytosed (i.e. the receptor is pulled back into the cell, taking the virus with it). This is an important distinction to make, because this opens the door for other opportunities to interfere in this process (e.g. stuffing around with actin dynamics). Of course, this is a pop culture depiction, but I believe that many people discount how useful such visual summaries are for even people who are deep in the field, and as such I’d hope that people spend effort sweating the details, because it does help!

papaf 6y ago
Could it use both methods of entry? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302060#fig3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016635422... I cannot comment on how accurate it is, but I found the interactive overview in the Scientific American to be awesome.
- hirenj 6y ago
  It very well could use both mechanisms, which I neglected to think about. I only think endocytosis is important because that specific mechanism uses ACE2 and heparan sulfate (which can be blocked using heparin I think).
hirenj 6y ago
I had no idea there was more to the page because of the weird scrolling on the site, so I missed the glycan (sugar) stuff, which is my bread and butter. I think the consensus is that there is not likely any shielding going on with the glycans (like what you would find with HIV), but there are glycans that stabilise the ACE2 binding part. Also, people have found glycans on a protein cleavage region, which I would expect could impart resistance to cleavage (a predictor I wrote from a few years back correctly predicted those sites).
- aeternum 6y ago
  Seems like this would be much better as a video. It probably took a tons of effort to put this into a webpage and it was quite buggy and unintuitive.

by hirenj 6y ago

papaf 6y ago

Could it use both methods of entry? https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166354220302060#fig3 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016635422... I cannot comment on how accurate it is, but I found the interactive overview in the Scientific American to be awesome.

hirenj 6y ago
It very well could use both mechanisms, which I neglected to think about. I only think endocytosis is important because that specific mechanism uses ACE2 and heparan sulfate (which can be blocked using heparin I think).

hirenj 6y ago

I had no idea there was more to the page because of the weird scrolling on the site, so I missed the glycan (sugar) stuff, which is my bread and butter. I think the consensus is that there is not likely any shielding going on with the glycans (like what you would find with HIV), but there are glycans that stabilise the ACE2 binding part. Also, people have found glycans on a protein cleavage region, which I would expect could impart resistance to cleavage (a predictor I wrote from a few years back correctly predicted those sites).

aeternum 6y ago
Seems like this would be much better as a video. It probably took a tons of effort to put this into a webpage and it was quite buggy and unintuitive.