Question

Question:

An outbreak of betacoronavirus severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 began in Wuhan, China in December 2019. COVID-19, the disease associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection, rapidly spread to produce a global pandemic. Since then many scientists around world try to understand the mechanism of the virus. One of the very important questions that the scientists are asking is that why there is a difference with respect to severity of the disease between infected individuals. We know some factors such as people with advanced age or underlying health conditions such as heart disease and diabetes are more likely to develop severe symptoms. But those do not explain the whole story, because there are plenty of young and healthy individuals with severe symptoms or old individuals with underlying health conditions with mild symptoms. Why might that be? Could genetics play a role? Because we know from past experiences that genetics is associated with susceptibility to infectious diseases such as particular HBB variants make people less susceptible to malaria, or particular CCR5 variants can protect people from HIV infection, or particular FUT2 variants prevent people to be infected by norovirus.

So,

a) Please discuss the molecular mechanisms of the novel coronavirus and decide which human genes are possible candidates of most likely to influence severity of the disease.

b) Please discuss if the geographical location could affect the severity of the disease in terms of genetic variation and evolutionary migration patterns of humans.

Answer 1

Ans a) Genetics has a role to play when it comes to development of coronavirus and it is often observed that there are certain genes which can make one susceptible to the novel COVID19. There are certain type of genetic modifications which can lead to change in the coronavirus and makes one more susceptible to the same. It is found according to some research that HLA is a gene which might be having an impact on corona virus and make the patient more susceptible to the same. The HLA gene is responsible for directing the body to produce specific proteins and they tend to recognize pathogens and antigen and eliminate the same from the body. It is found that in many cases, when there is a mutation in the HLA gene, it makes the patient more susceptible to the coronavirus infection. Another gene which might influence more susceptibility is the TMPRSS2 gene and is directly involved with flu infection. This gene is responsible for production of proteins and the coronavirus possibly might be using the help of these proteins to penetrate inside the host cells. Even it is found that the ACE2 gene might be leading to increase coronavirus infection as the spikes on the coronavirus tends to recognize the ACE2 port. Depending on the presence or mutation of these gene, it tends to impact and show the severity of infection. There are many theories when it comes to identifying the mechanism of action and why it tends to cause the symptoms. According to some research it is found that COVID19 tends to damage the hemoglobin molecule and hence it impairs the red blood cells. Hence, due to this RBC is not able to transport the oxygen throughout the body and reduces the amount of oxygen that reaches the lungs. This tends to compromise the amount of oxygen in lungs and hence causes the respiratory distress syndrome.

Ans b) It is found that geographical location has impacted the severity of the disease as the virus has spread from one place to another, there has been evolution and genetic variation in the COVID19 virus. As the COVID19 is spreading from place to place, it is evolving and undergoing mutation due to which it is able to infect people from different geographical. The strain which originated in WUHAN has progressed and evolved in terms of genetic variation and become evolved as it reached to other geographical locations.