The Joy of Sharing Science No.2, Everything you need to know about COVID-19 Biology Supplement

Joy of Sharing Science
Figure 1: An annotated diagram of
SARS-CoV-2 structure
(Taken from: “2019 Novel
Coronavirus.” Cusabio Life Science –
Your Biology Science Partner,
www.cusabio.com/2019-novelcoronavirus.html.)
Coronaviruses have a lipid envelope that surrounds the protein coat that
shields the nucleic acid. They usually cause mild respiratory infections but can
cause pneumonia as well. They are characterized by the spikes on their surface
which give the coronaviruses a crown-like shape, thus the name “corona”
(“crown” in Latin). Also, they are RNA viruses, meaning that the nucleic acid
they carry is an RNA molecule. The new SARS-CoV-2 differs from the other
coronaviruses mainly because it has a different RNA sequence.
Figure 2: An illustration of
SARS-CoV-2 viruses
(Taken from: “Coronaviruses.”
National Foundation for
Infectious Diseases, 17 June 2020,
www.nfid.org/infectiousdiseases/coronaviruses/.)
Two other very known coronaviruses are Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
(MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). MERS was
reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012 for the first time, and it originated from
camels. It was mainly seen in the Arabian Peninsula. 3-4 out of 10 of the
people infected died due to MERS. SARS was seen in 2002 in Southern
China. It affected the respiratory systems and had a mortality rate of 10%
approximately. Covid-19 also affects the respiratory systems, and it reaches a
mortality rate from 2-3% to 13% in some countries.
These three viruses are very similar in their RNA size. The RNA molecules
they carry are 29844b, 29751b, and 30119b in COVID-19, SARS-CoV; and
MERS-CoV, respectively. When a sequence analysis was conducted, it was