Early in his life, Covid-19 acquired a potential that would be assured in the human relationship. The virus produced a small change similar to its genetic code. It appeared to be an unfortunate accident – a fragment of genetic information from another virus contracted the coronavirus while both were bat infected.
Incorporated into this tiny bit of genome, however, was the direction that changed a key part of the virus – its spike protein. This important protein sticks outside the coronavirus and is the part that binds to the outside of cells, helping the rest of the virus to enter where it can re-enter. -reproduction.
This change to Covid-19 spike protein meant that it was able to capture an enzyme found in the human body called furin. This enzyme acts as a pair of molecular scissors, usually cutting open hormones and growth factors to activate them. But when furin carves part of a Covid-19 spike protein, which is usually wrapped in a series of loops on the outside of the virus, it opens like a hinge.
“This marks a new series in the spike protein,” says Yohei Yamauchi, a reader in viral cell biology at the University of Bristol, UK, who has been studying how the mutation might this has led to Covid-19 becoming more infectious in humans. “One of the changes that makes this virus very different from previous coronaviruses caused by Sars and Mers.”
This new mutation meant that Covid-19 could suddenly latch on to an important molecule found scattered around the outside of human respiratory cells called Neuropilin 1. This molecule helps to transporting material inside cells and deeper into figs – the mutation was like handing Covid-19 the keys to a new door into our cells and that meant that the virus reproduces in larger numbers in the human airways.
While this mutation was just like one in the short life of Covid-19, it was significant. Some researchers believe that this may be one of the main mutations that has allowed the coronavirus to jump off species and start causing a rapidly spreading disease in humans. But almost as soon as he did this, he started building other mutations.