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Can we "mutate" a virus to use radioactive isotope of carbon (c-14? something that is not harmful for humans) so that we can observe how viral a virus is? Not
by praveen9920 6y ago
Can we "mutate" a virus to use radioactive isotope of carbon (c-14? something that is not harmful for humans) so that we can observe how viral a virus is?
Not an expert on radio isotopes or spectrography or viruses.
Note: I know, radioactive virus at this point might freakout people a little.
- koeng 6y agoAFAIK there aren’t methods to do that in vivo, unfortunately.
- ISL 6y agoNo need. It mutates itself. The propagation of genetic strains of Covid-19 can be viewed here: https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global Our ability to do this for every single Covid-19 case in the universe is, I imagine, limited only by funding/infrastructure/training.
- globular-toast 6y agoWhere would it get the carbon-14 from? Virus particles (virions) are made by and from their host. So you'd need a human made from carbon-14 first.
- Jabbles 6y agoWe basically already know how viral viruses are because they undergo mutations, and we can trace which strain people have and where they caught it from by sequencing their DNA (technically RNA) and looking for the virus's "ancestors". See for example https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/du-gt100120.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-10/du-gt100120.... Also you wouldn't mutate a virus with C14 or similar radiactive isotope, because that can't be encoded in its genetics, and such a virus would use any old Carbon atom (most likely normal C12) to replicate. Finally, mutating a virus and releasing it seems ethically dubious in the middle of a pandemic...