I will try to leave this up for discussion.
Is the SARS-CoV-2 a ‘chimera virus’ made in the lab? A virologist’s warning.
NEW YORK — As Americans delay elective surgeries and avoid doctors and hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare spending declines have more than offset the added costs of COVID-19 care, insurance executives and experts say, boosting U.S. health insurer profits.
In regenerative medicine, an ideal treatment for patients whose muscles are damaged from lack of oxygen would be to invigorate them with an injection of their own stem cells.
The first study on vitamin D and COVID-19 was released as a preprint on April 23, and a second study was released as a preprint on April 26. Here’s what we can learn from the second study. The first study, which I reported on a few days ago, focused on disease severity, while the second one, which I’m reporting on here, focused on mortality.
The Results
The electronic health records of 780 laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 cases from the government hospitals of Indonesia between March 2 and April 24 was searched for data on vitamin D status prior to admission, age, sex, preexisting conditions, and mortality. Vitamin D status was classified as normal (≥30 ng/mL), insufficient (21−29 ng/mL), or deficient (≤20 ng/mL).
Hope Biosciences has been given clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to move ahead with a phase 2 trial to evaluate its investigational stem cell therapy in providing immune support against COVID-19.
Jordan says Moderna is able to scale up quicker than traditional manufacturers, as its vaccines are created by manipulating mRNA, the molecule that carries genetic instructions from DNA to a cell’s protein-making ribosome. Moderna manipulates mRNA so that it instructs human cells to produce certain viral proteins; the proteins themselves don’t cause infection, but they do invoke an immune response. “The RNA uses the human body as its bioreactor,” says Jordan, so Moderna itself doesn’t have to manufacture the proteins. “To create a different vaccine candidate [for Moderna] is to trigger a different RNA sequence. We don’t need to build a different cell processing plant,” says Jordan.
The central dogma of molecular biology deals with the detailed residue-by-residue transfer of sequential information. It states that such information cannot be transferred back from protein to either protein or nucleic acid.— Francis Crick.
The dogma is a framework for understanding the transfer of sequence information between information-carrying biopolymers, in the most common or general case, in living organisms. There are 3 major classes of such biopolymers: DNA and RNA (both nucleic acids), and protein. There are 3×3=9 conceivable direct transfers of information that can occur between these. The dogma classes these into 3 groups of 3: three general transfers (believed to occur normally in most cells), three special transfers (known to occur, but only under specific conditions in case of some viruses or in a laboratory), and three unknown transfers (believed never to occur). The general transfers describe the normal flow of biological information: DNA can be copied to DNA (DNA replication), DNA information can be copied into mRNA (transcription), and proteins can be synthesized using the information in mRNA as a template (translation). The special transfers describe: RNA being copied from RNA (RNA replication), DNA being synthesised using an RNA template (reverse transcription), and proteins being synthesised directly from a DNA template without the use of mRNA. The unknown transfers describe: a protein being copied from a protein, synthesis of RNA using the primary structure of a protein as a template, and DNA synthesis using the primary structure of a protein as a template — these are not thought to naturally occur. [6].
Continue reading “US invests hundreds of millions to produce Covid-19 vaccines” »
We can reprogram our DNA. The nucleus of a cell is not read only. It is actually read and write. Basically, the cell is a programmable device, in response to environmental information.
The templates for protein synthesis are RNA (ribonucleic acid) molecules. In particular, a class of RNA molecules called messenger RNA (mRNA) are the information-carrying intermediates in protein synthesis. Other RNA molecules, such as transfer RNA (tRNA) and ribosomal RNA (rRNA), are part of the protein-synthesizing machinery. All forms of cellular RNA are synthesized by RNA polymerases that take instructions from DNA templates. This process of transcription is followed by translation, the synthesis of proteins according to instructions given by mRNA templates.
The arthritis drug tocilizumab has shown early promise in preventing extreme inflammation in gravely ill COVID-19 patients, according to a French clinical study.
The treatment, which suppresses the body’s natural immune response, was found to reduce “significantly” the number of deaths or life support interventions compared with a control group of patients.
The study, carried out by the Paris university hospital trust (AP-HP), looked at 129 people hospitalised with moderate or severe viral pneumonia, which occurs in 5–10 percent of COVID-19 patients.
