Lipid Bilayer and (Corona) Virus Spikes

Had an idea and was trying to take a glimpse into cellular biology today. It all started with this type of media articles.

«Under the microscope [electron], coronaviruses appear to be covered with pointy spires, giving them the appearance of having a crown or "corona" -- hence the name. Beneath the crown is the outer layer of the virus, which is made up of lipids, or what you and I would call fat.»

There's something in there that doesn't really click my intuition.

Cells are said to be made of cytoplasm (a gel made 80% of water and other stuff floating in it) covered by fatty membranes. Please note the same type of membrane is shared by cells, bacteria and viruses.

It doesn't look to me like they have any mechanical resistance at all. I mean, bubbles of water based gel surrounded by a double molecule layer of fat.

If i didn't know about extracellular matrix which is made of collagen i'd say the body tissues can't even stay together.

Collagen is a protein that forms 30% of our bodies. To have an idea of how strong this stuff, is, enough to say tendons which are terminations of muscles through which they are attached to bones are made of collagen. If you make a fist you can see and feel them above the wrists of your hands.

By contrast "The cell membranes of almost all organisms and many viruses are made of a lipid bilayer, as are the nuclear membrane surrounding the cell nucleus, and other membranes surrounding sub-cellular structures. The lipid bi-layer is the barrier that keeps ions, proteins and other molecules where they are needed and prevents them from diffusing into areas where they should not be."

First. We may note in this definition again viruses are separated from living organisms. Then. This lipid barrier separate the chemicals from inside the cells by those from outside. What's keeping it together is electrical bonds between molecules of lipid barrier mentioned above with absolutely no mechanical resistance. If it wasn't for extracellular matrix, those things would probably burst like a soap bubble and fall apart.



And my thought went of course to types of cells that "live" outside a cellular matrix. First thing that came to mind is red blood cells. So i looked and to my surprise i saw they lack a nucleus. "The cytoplasm of erythrocytes is rich in hemoglobin, an iron-containing biomolecule that can bind oxygen and is responsible for the red color of the cells and the blood. ... The cell membrane is composed of proteins and lipids, and this structure provides properties essential for physiological cell function such as deformability and stability" So the natural question comes to mind. Are they alive? and of course that Quora answer didn't clarify anything. And on a further search i could not find an answer to the question if they use oxygen for themselves. Why should they. They don't need to burn oxygen to keep the temperature constant because rest of the body does that from them. I think the're more like molecular assemblies than living cells. Of course they wear out and "die" after a number of cycles of oxygen and carbon dioxide carrying.

Viruses. Their membrane is again made of a lipid bylayer. They of course don't have a nucleus because the're not cells though inside they have RNA which is part of the nucleus of living, reproducing cells.

Though they are not alive and obviously can't reproduce, once they entered a host cell they can "command" that cell to produce copies of themselves which sometimes are not "exact copies" and thus they... mutate. Some of the mutants will do less, some more than their "parents". The most complicated "component" the host cell needs to "fabricate" using the viral RNA instructions is the spike protein. In fact, the company who mapped this protein and can produce them uses viral RNA (linked later in this post).

I would assume they didn't provide the Jsmol model for the molecule, but here, for comparison, the molecule of HIV spike. If you click on "cartoon" on style for display option you will see the ribbon model. To compare size with lipid by-layer choose ball and stick.

We've saw so far seen the HIV virus looks identical (at least in some media representations) with coronaviruses. Part of the answer is... they are very similar. But the coronavirus misses something. The second membrane layer or the "matrix protein" seen in HIV of which the spikes are seemed to be anchored to.


There are other diagrams of coronaviruses on the web. They all suggest the "envelope" of the virus is made mostly of fat that includes some proteins.
Other, more scholarly articles, trying to suggests that the envelope of such viruses is made more of proteins than lipids. Or even lipids and unevenly distributed protein.

"We present evidence that suggests M can adopt two conformations and that membrane curvature is regulated by one M conformer. Elongated M protein is associated with rigidity, clusters of spikes and a relatively narrow range of membrane curvature. In contrast, compact M protein is associated with flexibility and low spike density."

"CoV virions are enveloped and consist of four structural proteins (Figure 1b). The RNA genome is encapsidated by the N proteins into a helical nucleocapsid, surrounded by a lipid envelope. Two major glycoproteins, M protein, which has three transmembrane (TM) domains, and S protein, which has a single TM domain; and minor non-glycosylated E proteins with a single hydrophobic domain, are incorporated into the CoV envelope"

By looking at the section (c) of the image below, i try to imagine what is the role of M (from Membrane) and E (from envelope) proteins in the envelope of the virus. Are they tied together in a structure or just caught loose in the fat (lipid) membrane.

US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health

"However, a recent electron microscopy study did not detect a well-ordered rigid lattice structure in individual virions, showing instead loosely ordered M-M protein networks [101], suggesting that the lattice-like matrix structure formed by M-M interactions might be flexible and unstable, and so that the model might need some modifications."

By looking at the animated image of the bylayer above and that of the spike protein and the two diagrams from Wikipedia here comes my question. How the gigantic spikes molecule hold onto the loose layer of thin fat (after neglecting the more obvious question that is how corona viruses which are basically a round bubble of fat with RNA inside and spikes outside hold themselves together inside blood). Can't figure yet the size of this protein but is should be certainly 100 times bigger than the two layers of fat acids figured above. Each straight portion of those "ribbons" below is probably as long as half of the thickness of the membrane.

So imagine that. A nanometric blob of fat with some genetic material inside flowing in the air from a sick person nearby getting into your lungs and attacking your cell. That is if your lungs' cilia and mucus don't eliminated them in your esophagus.

But what type of cells this "viruses" "attack" or "attach to"?

«"We then analyzed a total of nearly 60,000 cells to determine whether they activated the gene for the receptor and potential cofactors, thus in principle allowing them to be infected by the coronavirus," reports Soeren Lukassen, one of the lead authors of the study now being published in The EMBO Journal. "We only found the gene transcripts for ACE2 and for the cofactor TMPRSS2 in very few cells, and only in very small numbers." Lukassen and his four co-lead authors Robert Lorenz Chua, Timo Trefzer, Nicolas C. Kahn and Marc A. Schneider discovered that certain progenitor cells in the bronchi are mainly responsible for producing the coronavirus receptors. These progenitor cells normally develop into respiratory tract cells lined with hair-like projections called cilia that sweep mucus and bacteria out of the lungs. Lukassen and his four co-lead authors Robert Lorenz Chua, Timo Trefzer, Nicolas C. Kahn and Marc A. Schneider discovered that certain progenitor cells in the bronchi are mainly responsible for producing the coronavirus receptors. These progenitor cells normally develop into respiratory tract cells lined with hair-like projections called cilia that sweep mucus and bacteria out of the lungs."»

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200407131453.htm

But i bet no "virus" is going to attack you if those types of tissues wouldn't be already damaged. As i said above, most of your body's cells are protected by the strong collagen extracellular matrix through which a fat cover virus cannot possibly get through.

Pollutants, of which smoke is one of the worse factors. Smoke is a very complex compound of air born breathable substances of which the worse by far are heavy metals in ash, which can mutate bacteria creating unknown strain to your immune system, and also damage your respiratory tract lining cells.

In fact, the masks people are wearing to protect themselves from "virus" in fact protect them from the pollutants that may damage their respiratory tracts enough to make them vulnerable for infections because viruses are so small they will pass through most filters, not talking about masks.

As for the vaccine:

"The molecule the team produced – and for which they obtained a structure – represents only the extracellular portion of the spike protein, but is enough to elicit an immune response in patients."

And another question that becomes obvious after all this presentation. Can current HIV medicines be effective against coronavirus, since they are so similar?

"There are many newspaper articles citing effectiveness of anti-HIV drugs: ritonavir, lopinavir, either alone or in combination with oseltamivir, remdesivir, and chloroquine; and among these, ritonavir, remdesivir, and chloroquine showed efficacy at cellular level"

And since i put the two diagrams together to show the similarities with HIV virus, i started asking myself. How come they got flu vaccines which target the spikes ("the stems of the lollipop"), for so long and they don't have one for HIV.

"Doing that would require changing how the vaccine attacks the flu virus, which is shaped like a sphere with lollipops protruding from it. Vaccines so far have targeted the candy at the end of the lollipop, which changes every year."

The answer lies somewhere within the amount of money the drug companies get from insurance companies for a long life time supply of expensive antiviral drugs instead of a one time vaccine.

Cârtițele și influencer-ii

În zilele liniștite de toamnă, iarnă și primăvară, când pereții unei clădiri sunt mai calzi decât aerul de afară (din cauza căldurii din interior), poate doar cu jumătate de grad, apare o deplasare a aerului în sus în jurul clădirii. Aerul urcă pe lângă pereți și vidul creat atrage alt aer de la nivelul solului. Ca în această imagine.


Multă lume crede că știința construcției clădirilor este ceva recent. Multe din aceste cunoștințe au existat în antichitate. În Imperiul antic al Chinei au existat coduri (reguli) de construcție a clădirilor care includeau principiile feng shui (care în limba chineză înseamnă aer, apă).

Japonia antică și medievală a fost dpdv cultural o țară tributară Chinei. Începând de la scriere până la arta războiului. Aceasta se regăsește până și în manualul-schelet sau partea mai puțin secretă a cunoștințelor ninja (restul se transmite prin tradiția orală - kuden, și prin suluri (scrolls) păstate în familii - clanuri).

"The absolute first step in understanding the Chinese connection to the Japanese text is to understand that Japanese society across most of its medieval history viewed China as a centre of culture and civilization"

Ninja sunt priviți de public ca ceva ridicol. Niște saltimibanci care apar și dispar, datorită filmelor.

Nimic mai departe de adevăr. Ninja sunt cei mai prefecționați spioni din toate timpurilor și faptul că nimeni nu știe nimic despre ei o dovedește.

Însă există pe ici, pe colo indicii ale existenței lor. Unul din acesta este o altă carte, tradusă tot de acest istoric-ninja Antony Cummins.

Din cauză că aceste manuale sunt doar niște schițe care pot fi urmate în procesul de antrenament, dar trebuie completate cu restul cunoștințelor orale, care sunt 90% din total, nu se găsesc referințe la folosirea fenomenului de convecție termică în avantajul lor, în misiuni de observație și influențare. Dar una din posibilități este învăluirea clădirii în diverse tipuri de fum, care pot influența pe cei din interior fără ca ei să știe.

Mă trezesc dimineața, vin la calculator, citesc niște știri și deodată simt miros de fum. Mă duc afară și aerul e curat. Vin înapoi, fum. Dar găsesc în locurile binecunoscute, pământul afânat și găuri (de cârtiță, explicația oficială) dedesubt. Bătătoresc acel pământ și pentru o oră, două, poate mai multe, nu mai este fum.

Primăvara trecută au venit niște tipi care păreau toți japonezi care doreau să apară ca mexicani și au făcut niște reparații dar și niște modificări la clădire. Una din modificări este o streașină deasupra contoarelor care sunt toate așezate pe peretele unde locuiesc. Au tăiat "siding"-ul, adică primul înveliș al peretelui care este format din alte două panouri și au instalat streașina însă sub streașină este un spațiu pe unde acest curent termic din jurul clădirii poate intra și de acolo prin micile spații între panouri în perete și mai departe înăuntru. Acest curent termic produce și o presiune (foarte mică dar existentă) în interiorul peretelui care face ca acest fum să ajungă înăuntru.

La mai puțin de 2 metri de perete este o gaură de cârtiță (dreapta jos în poza următoare). Cine ar putea crede că de acolo ar putea ieși fum care nu se simte afară ci direct în apartament? Dar dacă urmăriți diagrama din postare veți vedea că e posibil.

Bineînțeles această metodă nu mi se aplică doar mie. Probabil e veche de mii de ani și a fostă folosită și încă se folosește.

Bineînțeles folosirea metodei implică cunoștințe despre folosirea și manipularea cârtițelor. Acestea sunt aduse după ce au fost prinse în alte părți și lăsate să-și facă treaba, după care prin una din galerii se introduce substanța de ars, amestecată cu salpetru pentru a arde sub pământ după care se astupă iar fumul iese prin galeriile de lângă clădire.

Nu îți dai seama. Concentrația de fum crește treptat, poți confunda fumul la început cu mirosul de la aragaz, cafea, etc..

Am spus-o de atâtea ori și o repet. În acest complex trăiesc mulți emigranți, iar ninja din Japonia, care sunt experți și în camuflare, se îmbracă, se tund la fel și chiar vorbesc spaniola dar dacă te uiți atent, mai ales în unele ipostaze poți vedea că de fapt sunt japonezi și nu sud-americani.

Dar în clădirea vecină, la câțiva metri în dreapta (nu se vede în această poză) la parter la un moment dat stătea chiar o japoneză.

Bineînțeles asta este doar una din tactici. Se pot schimba în funcție de vreme, direcția vântului și ce vor ei să influențeze.

Nu știu ce este acest fum, dar cred că diferă de la o situație la alta. Poate fi un stimulant, un ușor sedativ, etc.. Poate fi uneori droguri obișnuite ca marijuana.

Ca să nu mai vorbesc de toate confuziile lingvistice, create și menținute de sute de ani. În engleză la gripă se spune flu, care vine de la influenza.

James Bond and UM 01314

There is something that bothers me a lot lately (besides the current constant bullying through noises and pollution and everything here at the apartment). But is really hard to talk about since it's unbelievable even to me.

At the end of HS which in itself was an unbelievable adventure, with John Travolta, ONJ, Joe Dassin as class mates, others, (Jane Fonda as chemistry teacher by example) i went for the mandatory 9 months military stage. Though i had this fracture at 13 that does not allow me to freely move the left hand (60% mobility left in elbow articulation) i have been drafted and went with all my colleagues, future students at some of the sections of the Mechanical Faculty in Iași at Galați, where there was a tank regiment (UM01314, UM from Military Unit). We were told many times, everything there was a state secret, but i don't believe that is the case anymore, after 40 years. We were supposed to be trained as tank or tank platoon commanders (T55) but were organized as infantry platoons. We had a day lieutenant who was going home in the afternoon and his lieutenant (replacement, whatever) was one of us, by his first name Mugur (pronounced Moogoor, the word for bud in Romanian). However he looked older (not admitted the first time in college) and was enrolled in future evening classes so i didn't get to see it after that at Iași.

Nowadays after i got Amazon video and FLEX box from Xfinity i started to browse the free movies and ended up seeing some of the handsome Roger Moore (my childhood favorite actor) movies, including The Saint and some of the James Bond. However every time i looked at him i saw my ex platoon commander from 78-79. But Roger Moore was 50 at the time.

Mugur has been there alright every day from September to June, i saw him going to bed and waking up every day in that stinking dorm, ate the same crappy food, except for a 10 day "permission" in December, another short one in May and probably another 10 days one for him only as his function privilege. But when we were marching the 10 miles to the shooting range, we all spread after a mile or so so we could not see each other actually marching. And after December all the training slowed down and turned to long mornings of sleeping with our head on the benches or reading all kinda books that we were trading among each other while the lieutenant was teaching us tank mechanics, tactics and whatever strategy theory, Soviet style.

I remember one particular episode since. Due to my HS French teacher, "who went to study in France for 6 months after college" (in reality i think he was the French singer Hervé Cristiani) i memorized a poem of Baudelaire. One day i was reading from a bilingual French Romanian edition of Baudelaire when the good lieutenant "caught me" reading and called me in front of the class with that book. Then he opened it at the exact same page where that poem was and asked me if i knew that poem. I could not lie to him and i said yes and then he asked me to recite which at first i was reluctant and i think he ordered me to and everybody went in awe of course and since that day they started to call me Jean Georges (John George in French) and that was my name throughout college.

But wait there's more. One day "his sister" came to visit him. Don't know how "he managed" to bring her inside the dorm in the military base for us all to see her. She looked exactly like Maud whatever his partner in a James Bond movie. And the captain, the battalion commander over all 200 of us future students was a guy Mihai Oprea which now i think was the ex- King of Romania Michael (Mihai).

Don't know what exactly the expression is in English, but i've never been screwed in my entire life more than by these two guys.

Just remembered something. Firs three weeks we could not take a shower because the showers were broken as i can remember. As we were learning the infantry steps and moves whatever (i'm not familiar with these terms in English) a nail from the sole of one my shoes "grew" inwards. It took me weeks until i finally stopped complaining and just pulled it out of there.

Water Purification Through Infusion

Everybody has a natural repulsion towards the tiny bits of leaves or whatever you made your tea with. So if some end in your cup you will avoid to ingest those. It might be some hard coded ancestral reaction that dictates you to want to drink only clear water.

However there is more to it. Those leaves have fibers that absorbs toxins from water. So you don't want to ingest those after making your cup of tea when you separate the clear part with a stiff or use the little bag. For the minutes you leave the tea in the hot water, those leaves while eliminating the soluble part that gives color and taste also absorb unwanted toxins, like heavy metals and stuff like that. It may be one of the reasons herbal teas are good for sick people. It gives them an extraclean source of water.

For the last decades since i learn how to make pasta the original (Italian way) in Italy i've been thinking many times or almost every time i was making it. Italians use 10 times or more the amount of water necessary to cook the pasta. Probably because of thermal inertia. That is, you don't want the water to stop boiling when you put in the pasta and i bet it originated at high class restaurants. Pasta boils more uniformly and has less time to start dissolving and become mushy. Timing is more reliable. Other reasons.

As you already may have figured, there's a huge downturn. Because of the amount of water, nobody uses bottled spring water to cook pasta. Not even the sophisticated Italians. Tap water, we all now, corrodes the pipes, that may be made of high alloys that have heavy metals in maybe in the form of nano particles. Or at least the faucets which usually are made of high chrome alloys. I think it's already obvious but i'll state it anyways. In those ten minutes, your pasta will absorb not only water but the little amount of fiber present even in white flour may concentrate toxins that may be present in water and time release them in your gut.

I wrote this after Angela who was listening to Coast to Coast told me one dude came tonight with the idea that generally Italians over 65 have no immune system left because of eating so much wheat all their lives which i simply can't agree with (aligned with the current anti-wheat trend). All people on the planet eat about the same amount of wheat, though no other so much under the form of daily or twice daily pasta boiled in tons of water. Which BTW is not planet friendly either because of the energy required to boil that water.

And let us all not forget my first blog post ever. No need to read it, my English back then was... i don't know, less standard than today. I will bring in one of the important phrases:

"I found a while ago a strange idea on the web, as an important cause of the fall of the roman empire being lead poisoning from the plumbing."

It may have been one of the causes, now i believe the main cause may have been cutting the flow of gold from Transylvania which was an average of 200 tons a year for 169 years, after the invasion of Goths, Huns, Magyars, etc.. Which gold Romans used for imports they got addicted to which also attracted the warriors of Asia, ex-guardians of the silk road, that is Goths, Huns, Magyars etc..

(One may think 200 tons of gold is a lot to quarry and haul from Dacia back to Rome in those days. Here is a visualization of 1.6 tons of gold in the back of the truck and the equivalent in paper currency on the left).

And the turning of gold into lead.

Lined up

Getting out to me is just the beginning of a huge uninterrupted show, with actors and extras lined up, as many as possible not to raise suspicion. But nothing, nothing is random, just one scene after another suggesting this hole place is nothing but a huge film setup. Where are the cameras. I know on the streets there must bye those on the poles that have been left with enough security to be hacked and streamed on the dark web. Probably in the complex they have IP cameras at windows.

Today again i forgot my walking dumbbells and i just grabbed the camera and filmed/pictured when i got too mad to ignore. Not all of them of course.

I would start in the reverted order of pictures/videos on my phone.

This guys appeared in front of me out of nowhere. I mean he didn't squeeze or anything, it just flowed with the traffic. So the many others. Which suggest some app that coordinates the traffic for this purpose. Show on cameras on the freeway with LPN, stickers, brands and logos.

I could have pictured him when stopped at the intersection but didn't figure it until i was on the freeway at high speed. This is happening because of the huge amounts of smoke, probably marijuana i've been exposed to yesterday while cleaning. He slowed down for no apparent reason, a couple of times when i pulled the camera, maybe trying to make me bump into him while using the camera while driving. Yes i know no sense of self preserving, which means the car could have been self driven as i suspected many times. (Older car fitted with self driving systems of an unknown technology). Resolution came bad so i have to explain why i did it. It's a Honda CR-V with LN KPX. It has a soccer ball on it with some green tape on top figuring a mask. 2:35 PM, I5 South, Tigard.
Every time i approach an intersection a car, several, coming, going, with open windows. Because they have to slow down and i get to get real close to distracted drivers and passengers with potentially open windows.

Today i planned to create a onedrive account so i can save my videos at original resolution. During my trip today i shot a number of them trying to prove what's happening.