[Covid-19 pandemic has crippled the world to the extent that almost entire world has come to a halt. Professor Raies Qadri from Department of Biotechnology University of Kashmir has his expert opinion on the scenario that needs immediate attention for a better tomorrow]
Raies.Qadri
Before we talk about the havoc created all over the world by much talked about Covid-19, let’s try to understand the dynamics of ecosystem. The nature has been kind enough to provide us the macro environment, ecosystem as well as microenvironment like blood or alveolar lavage present in our body. In the macroenvironment every living organisms has a right to survive and fight for its livelihood. The interaction between plants, animals, insects and microorganisms makes a complete networking in which utilization of nutrients become available. The regulatory pathways for these living organisms lead to better environment and ecosystem. The biology of these organisms has been identified and characterized differently but they need the suitable environment for their survival. However it is strange to see the behavior of an organism under unsuitable conditions where they make use of their immune system for their protection.
The mankind has been blessed with suitable environment for its livelihood where nutrients have been derived for its survival and better tomorrow. The establishment of developmental research and identification of biomolecules has been a practice since inception, though we couldn’t reach to any conclusion due the changes that occurred in the macro as well as in the microenvironment. The question which should be asked is that whether microenvironment is reflection of macroenvironment, answer should be yes, because we derive important molecules like vitamins, proteins, carbohydrates etc from external environment or macroenvironment.
A lot is being debated these days whether this virus Covid-19 is the naturally mutated form of coronaviruses or something mutated by genetic engineering in the lab in Wuhan province of China. That is a different case and men specialized for the said job to investigate the origin may come out with a better theory for the same. At the end, in either of the cases, we are presented with a highly virulent form of coronavirus that has made our life miserable all over the world. Here we will focus on the pure scientific nature of this microorganism and try to address the issues so as to see how to safeguard ourselves in such pandemics; today and in times to come.
The irregularities in the ecosystem, created by organisms, give rise to mutated genotypes which again has reflection on their phenotypes. The interaction between humans and animals in the macroenvironment has developed zoonosis which is an infectious disease that is transmitted between species from animals to humans (or from humans to animals). One of the zoonotic diseases recently has been identified as Coronavirus from bats. Environmental stressors such as drought or extreme temperatures can increase the rate at which bats pass diseases to humans. Not only does stress in general tend to reduce animals’ immune functions, but stressors such as shortages of food or water can force bats to migrate, spreading disease further. In fact, a recent “spillover” (the passing of a virus from a reservoir species into a new host) of Hendra virus from fruit bats in Australia correlated with a food shortage for local bats due to a climate shift. Because the bats were under nutritional stress, they were more infectious, which coincided with their moving into new territories in search of food. This created a perfect storm of new hosts and infectious reservoirs, resulting in an outbreak of Hendra among horses.
Coronaviruses (a family of closely related respiratory viruses) have now made headlines again, in the form of 2019-nCoV or Covid-19, the new coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China. As of April 8th, there have been around 1.5 million confirmed positive cases and around 85000 deaths from 2019-nCoV, with cases confirmed in more than 200 countries of the world; a severe pandemic indeed. There have been earlier outbreaks from coronaviruses as well, however, the latest one has proved deadliest and is threatening with the worst that is apprehended yet to come. All of these alarming outbreaks have one intriguing factor in common; that is bats. People eat bats and we need to understand the dynamics of this food chain as well so as to arrive at a better conclusion.
We have known for quite some time that bats were the primary source of both the SARS epidemic and the Nipah virus. The Ebola virus also originates in fruit bats, which can infect other forest animals that then pass the virus to humans. And evidence strongly suggests that bats have played this same role again which scientists term the “reservoir species” in the coronavirus outbreak. There are over 1,300 known species of bats, making them the second largest group of mammals on Earth. But it is their strange immune system that makes them the reservoir species for so many viruses and that is what makes them truly special.
Immunological differences between bats and humans uncover why these animals make such effective viral reservoirs. The first difference that is noted was interferon levels. Interferon(s) (IFNs) is an immune substance animals secrete to eliminate viruses. Humans have them, and so do bats. When grown in labs, analysis showed that bat cell lines produce higher levels of type I IFNs than human cell lines. Type I IFN is responsible for a variety of anti-viral jobs including limiting viral replication, killing infected cells, and activating other immune cells. Though wild bats have been shown to carry high IFN levels as well, the link between bat cell line behavior in the lab and bat’s natural immune system needs more work. There’s more strangeness, on top of their high interferon levels and flight-induced fevers. A study on Big Brown Bats revealed that bats have lower levels of inflammatory cytokines in their blood than we do. Inflammatory cytokines are substances in our bodies that race to the site of an infection, bringing immune cells with them, which helps to quench it locally before it can spread. This allows infected bats to keep spreading diseases to other animals without becoming victims themselves.
Viruses are named based on their genetic structure to facilitate the development of diagnostic tests, vaccines and medicines. Virologists and the wider scientific community do this work, so viruses are named by the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV). Diseases are named to enable discussion on disease prevention, spread, transmissibility, severity and treatment. Human disease preparedness and response is WHO’s role, so diseases are officially named by WHO in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). ICTV announced “severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)” as the name of the new virus on 11 February 2020. This name was chosen because the virus is genetically related to the coronavirus responsible for the SARS outbreak of 2003. While related, the two viruses are different. WHO announced “Covid-19” as the name of this new disease on 11 February 2020, following guidelines previously developed with the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
The pandemics have been going around here; the plague of Marseille happened in 1720, the great cholera outbreak in South Asia and Southeast Asia happened in 1820 and the Spanish Flu happened in 1920. Now we have Covid-19 in 2020 that has crippled the entire world. Well, I don’t remember about 1720, 1820 or even 1920 pandemics, however, I have read a little bit about the one that broke out in 1920. And most of you would have read that too, that Spanish Flu didn’t actually start in 1920. It started in 1918; and it lasted from 1918 to 1920. We see it were soldiers returning from World War I that took the virus around the world. So if we go by this whole theory about a pandemic happening once every 100 years, I think we should have been ready by now for the same. We should have prepared our hospital capacity, we should have prepared everything (says famous virologist Shahid Jameel 2019).
We need to understand the things in holistic approach to arrive at the logical conclusion. It is important to understand that when you disturb the ecosystem, these things will happen. When you keep destroying forests, there will be more animal-human contact and because of that there will be a higher probability of viruses in animals getting into humans. University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine scientists announced a potential vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the new coronavirus causing the COVID-19 pandemic. When tested in mice, the vaccine, delivered through a fingertip. SARS-CoV in 2003 and MERS-CoV in 2014 viruses, which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2, teach us that a protein, called a spike protein, is important for inducing immunity against the virus. We knew exactly where to fight this new virus,” said co-senior author Andrea Gambotto, Associate professor of surgery at the Pitt School of Medicine. “That’s why it’s important to fund vaccine research. You never know where the next pandemic will come from.” Compared to the experimental mRNA vaccine candidate that just entered clinical trials, the vaccine, PittCoVacc, short for Pittsburgh Coronavirus Vaccine, follows a more established approach, using lab-made pieces of viral protein to build immunity. The researchers also used a novel approach to deliver the drug, called a microneedle array, to increase potency. This array is a fingertip-sized patch of 400 tiny needles that delivers the spike protein pieces into the skin, where the immune reaction is strongest. The patch goes on like a Band-Aid and then the needles—which are made entirely of sugar and the protein pieces—simply dissolve into the skin.
We see since 2002, beta coronaviruses (CoV) have caused three zoonotic outbreaks; SARS-CoV in 2002–2003, MERS-CoV in 2012, and the newly emerged SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019. However, little is currently known about the biology of SARS-CoV-2. Here, using SARS-CoV-2 S protein pseudovirus system (the human angiotensin converting enzyme 2 (hACE2) is the receptor for SARS-CoV-2), we find that SARS-CoV-2 enters 293/hACE2 cells mainly through endocytosis, that PIKfyve, TPC2, and cathepsin L are critical for entry, and that SARS-CoV-2 S protein is less stable than SARS-CoV S. Polyclonal anti-SARS S1 antibodies T62 inhibit entry of SARS-CoV S but not SARS-CoV-2 S pseudovirions. Further studies using recovered SARS and COVID-19 patients’ sera show limited cross-neutralization, suggesting that recovery from one infection might not protect against the other. Our results present potential targets for development of drugs and vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 (Xiyuanou et al).
Conclusion:
The novel coronavirus pandemic has exposed the world order to the extent that it got crippled irrespective of whether it was a natural mutation or as some claim it to be a bioweapon from the Wuhan lab. In any case we have a lesson that needs to be seriously taken for a better world. Four important issues need to be taken as top priorities all over the world; whether a developed country or the developing one because at the end it affects everyone as we see virus from China travelled continents and crippled the world.
- Ecosystem needs to be protected; we should stop disturbing it as it can hit back ruthlessly.
- We need to improve the diagnostic infrastructure by huge margin as pandemics don’t give you much time for the same.
- There has to be investment in the vaccines; they are ultimately key for the general health of the humankind.
- All countries of the world need to give priority to the healthcare system. Covid-19 pandemic has exposed even the most developed countries where we see them struggling for even the basics.
The author is Professor in the Department of Biotechnology, University of Kashmir, presently Dean Students Welfare University of Kashmir. He can be mailed at [email protected]