More potent coronaviruses have emerged in recent years. MERS-CoV I is a beta coronavirus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS. SARS-CoV is a beta coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. Today, the world is dealing with SARS-CoV-2 (the novel coronavirus that causes coronavirus disease 2019, or COVID-19. Now researchers are finding out that the newest strain has a “disturbing parallel to HIV” allowing for abnormal “depletion of important immune cells.”
To better understand covid-19, virologists have analyzed its RNA sequence and its properties. Coronaviruses are characterized by the “spike protein” they produce in order to infect human immune cells. A team of researchers found four insertions in the spike glycoprotein (S) which are unique to the 2019-nCoV and are not present in other coronaviruses. In conjunction, the researchers identified amino acid residues in all four of the inserts that resembled amino acids from HIV-1 gp120 or HIV-1 Gag. When the researchers produced a 3D model of the 2019-nCoV, the inserts converged with these HIV properties to constitute a receptor binding site. In other words, this new virus had to be manipulated in a lab with HIV properties so it could bind more readily to human immune cells. Because initial outbreaks originated in Wuhan, China, there were immediate suspicions that coronavirus research and HIV research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology went afoul, and these biological experiments could have leaked (intentionally or unintentionally) from the lab....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...