Page 2 - Dream May 2020 English

COVID-19 SPECIAL
THE ENEMY
A killer and his devious ways
I am your terror, Nemesis.
FI am the novel coronavirus at your service.
irst things first. Let me introduce my illustrious family. The lethal SARS and MERS are my kin. They can kill you. My cousins 229E, NL63, OC43, HK01 are less threatening. More likely, you are familiar with
them. The last bout of common cold you had probably was the result of their visitation. Under the microscope, the spike-like protrusion gives an appearance of 'crown'. That is how we got our family name 'coronavirus', derived from Latin; corona, meaning "crown" or "halo".
Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) to image the Sars-CoV-2 from the throat swab sample by ICMR, India. The 'crown' part is distinctly visible
Some of the members in our family take great joy in infecting humans. In contrast, others prefer cow, pig, bats and other animals. I am the seventh, and brand-new, coronavirus, identified as infecting humans. That is why I am popularly known as 'novel' coronavirus. Novel meaning new or different. Looking at the dreadful diseases I cause, scientists have a fancy name for me – Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 or, in short, SARS-CoV-2. The illness I cause is called COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019).
Tiny but mighty
Take a strand of your hair. Magnify it to the size of the football field. In this scale, a typical lung cell will look like a three- story building. And I, just an average mobile phone! I am that minuscule – but can take up different spherical sizes from 80 to 200 nanometres diameter.
I am not only small but also simple. I have just a short strand of RNA and just 16 protein molecules which are cut and made from one long polyprotein. In my book of life, the RNA
is just a sequence of about 29,900 chemical letters, technically called nucleotides, in contrast to a total of 3,20,00,00,000 in your DNA. These chemical letters are codes or formulas for making proteins. All the instructions for my replications are contained in this small pocketbook.
Novel coronavirus, structure and functions of the proteins
Inside my sheathing sits nucleocapsid protein. It acts as a scaffold for my RNA. Like the steel frame gives the shape to the concrete building, the membrane protein is the central organiser. It determines my shape. The membrane, wrapped around me, is mixed with lipids, an oily substance. That is why when you hand wash with soap and water, I am destroyed. The hydrophobic, water-hating, portion of the soap molecules holds on tight to my lipids. The hydrophilic, water-loving end is forcefully pulled by water. Yanked by the pull, I rip apart.
Interacting with the membrane is my envelope protein which is draped over me like a gift wrapper. The glycoproteins, appearing like spikes, protrude from all sides. With all these needle-like structures coming out, I look like jackfruit or a porcupine. It is these spikes that appear like a crown under your microscope. This is me, technically called a virion. That is my physical description.
But don't underestimate me. I may be measly, but I am not frail. An ant in the ear of an elephant can cause a lot of trouble, isn't it? If you permit me to enter you, I cause havoc. As of 26th April 2020, I have infected 28,96,894 and killed 2,02,846. Every second, the numbers are going up.
I am a freeloader
Everyone has a weakness, but I have two. Firstly, I cannot replicate on my own. Second, I cannot do without you.
Even though the world trembles at my feet and almost half of the human population across the globe are under lockdown,
T.V. Venkateswaran
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