You know the power of distraction.
Something tweaks your curiosity glands, opening doors to places unintended.
I saw a beautiful image from a scanning electron microscope showing some COV-2 virus particles in among some cells. Here it is – from https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-hydroxychloroquine-potential-therapy-covid-19-begins
The purple bits are the virus. Naturally, I thought “Gee, that looks like coral spawning?”
The article holding this amazing image was about the use of hydroxychloroquine as a therapy for COVID-19. But, I chiseled the rust off my science from nearly four decades ago – and remembered that sperm is remarkably like virus particles. They are little bundles of information (DNA or RNA) with routines they like to follow. Coral spawn does what coral spawn does, and viruses do what viruses do.
But the sexual reproduction routine has some very similar activities to the virus routine. Both require the fusion of two cells – [sperm and egg] or [virus and victim (membrane)].
The internet is marvelous.
Within a moments of opening the door of distraction – I discovered a paper from 2017 which told me that BOTH virus and sperm (not human) rely on an (almost) identical proteins, to do that “fusion routine”. Crikey! And it turns out that there are very specific conditions needed for the “fusion” event to occur.[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170223124313.htm]
It might seem kind of obvious after you say it out loud, but the strong inference is that sperm and viruses shared a common evolutionary ancestor.
Huh? That shared protein group is found in viruses, protozoans, many plants and the group called “arthropods” (invertebrates with an exoskeleton, segmented body – includes insects, arachnids, crustaceans).
So what?
Malaria is a “protozoic” infection (called Plasmodium) in the red blood cells of humans. And remember that protozoans use the same proteins, and that viruses use the same proteins. Viruses and Protozoans both need the proteins (with names like HAP2) to get lock on to the cell membrane – and to get inside.
When our current Corona virus first made impact, it was positioned as a creator of a “wall” in our lungs that essentially blocked the transfer of gases – so the primary treatment was use of ventilators. This is because an earlier cousin of Covid-19 (called SARS) – gave victims a condition called ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome). When you get ARDS you want to have a good ventilator handy.
But Covid19 and his earlier cousin are different. Even though Covid19’s full name is SARS-CoV-2, he is a different beast to the SARS virus of 2003.
Covid19 may have a routine that instead attacks the ability of red blood cells to carry necessary gases (oxygen & CO2) in our body. Different to SARS-1 who does ARDS. You can see the dots joining, right?
Doesn’t the malaria protozoan parasite (Plasmodium family) ALSO attack the red blood cells? And don’t they both need specific proteins and conditions to latch onto target cells? Maybe. But what if they did?
The paper with the lovely image of Covid19 above that looked like coral, is all about a trial of hydroxychloroquine – which is a treatment for malaria. One of the ways that hydroxychloroquine might work is by interacting with membrane stability. It may also reduce cytokine activity, and we know that Covid19 likes to set these off. Curiously, cytokines are the chemicals that too much of will produce auto-immune diseases like lupus, arthritis and diabetes. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32034323]
So that is why they are testing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for Covid19. (They might have their own reasons – but I like to surmise.)
In the next article I will talk about Viruses in our bodies.
Why? Because no one talks about viruses as being healthy for us. Maybe our whole understanding is wrong.
- Our bodies, when healthy, have more viruses present than we do bacteria. One study estimated over 380 million viruses inhabiting us. That is TEN TIMES more than our bacteria count. But the viruses are NOT usually the ones that you hear about. (eg influenza, Covid19, herpes, polio).
- Our viruses are in a constant “war” with our bacteria. The viruses (called “phages”) attack their preferred bacteria – attach to them – and inject their viral sperm into them – causing the bacteria to make more viruses (and not bacteria). Most people don’t know that.
- But most people do know that you have “good bacteria” that live in your gut – they help you digest things. Some of us have even eaten MORE bacteria in the belief it will keep our gut bacteria herd healthier. And we eat foods like kefir and sauerkraut that we think our bacteria might enjoy too.