SARS-CoV-2

Question 1

What type of genome does coronavirus have?

Answer 1

Positive ssRNA

Question 2

What was different about this coronavirus?

Answer 2

Doesn’t need endocytic pathway to be functional, can fuse at plasma membrane instead, so has more options to enter cells than other coronaviruses have had before

Question 3

What happened with remdesivir?

Answer 3

Was a finalised drug used to treat Ebola and HCV
Did help slightly with coronavirus but wasn’t a massive difference

Question 4

What happened with dexamethasone?

Answer 4

Anti inflammatory , doesn’t inhibit anything to do with the virus just the inflammatory response

Question 5

What company made human monoclonal antibodies against SARS CoV 2?

Answer 5

Regeneron and it causes reduction in infection in populations , work against the spike protein

Question 6

Why do coronaviruses not mutate as quickly as other viruses?

Answer 6

As they have proofreading ability

Question 7

What type of response may be important for a viral vaccine that isn’t for a bacterial vaccine?

Answer 7

A good T cell response , need memory T cells and cytotoxic T cells to kill virally infected cells

Question 8

How do RNA vaccines work?

Answer 8

Based on a virus so RNA is encased in some kind of lipid structure that will fuse with membrane to deliver RNA into the cell and this will be translated into proteins like spike that will be presented to the immune system

Question 9

How can DNA vaccines be delivered?

Answer 9

Electroporation, small electric shock causes cell to become slightly porous and it takes up DNA

Question 10

How does oxford virus work?

Answer 10

Is chimp adenovirus stripped of any pathogenic genes and then the spike proteins was inserted into the genome of the virus
Goes through adenovirus replication cycle, making SARS2 spike protein which can act as an immunogen in the same way