Prokaryote, Eukaryote. Lving Cells and Viruses

Anybody done with trusting scientists who for decades did not produce anything new in medicine? 500 billion a year payed by the US government in grants, for what? They give each other grades and honors, go to conferences, dress nicely, live the life but nothing has really progressed. All we got is theories that we believe are true. Some of them are and some, amazingly contradict or have never been harmonized to each other.

Last major discovery in medicine, antibiotics, has been done by chance. Good thing there was a guy who realized what happened in his Petri dish, when a fungus killed his cultures. That was 98 years ago. However political considerations did not allow mass production until after WWII. Imagine the number of lives that could have been saved during that war.

Vaccinations have has also been done way before modern medicine. At least in this book history of vaccination begins with 7th century India. But who can know for sure. Though i bet it started as an alchemical experiment (like curing fire with fire or whatever).

So here i go. I cannot afford the luxury to study first and write later because of lack of time and vastness of subjects. And because of that i usually start with an idea on a hunch and then run into something else. Like in the other post about lipid bilayer. Never finished the subject because i ran into the striking similarity between HIV and the so called COVID virus, the current scare. Something i did not expect. And then i started to suspect that like in seismology and other sciences, there might be massive lies and cover-ups and nothing solid under the glossy layer of publications and prizes and titles.

Most molecules, including water, are said to be... bipolar. Just kidding. They are just polar. Better said, asymmetrical. I mean, they can be bipolar but most of the times are multi-polar and sometimes even unipolar. Both electrical and mechanical. That is mass and electric charge is distributed spatially. At some ends charges are mostly positive and at some ends are negative. Same with weight. Water by example

Everybody knows if not from Paula Abdul song, the opposites attract, and for this reason only, in stationary water molecules arrange in matrix like structures. These intermolecular forces are rather weak. However they exist and play a very important role in everything we know. Most interesting at the separation between a liquid and a gas, they help create a membrane, because liquid molecules cling to each other (each end to other's opposite end). Capilarity. The reason textile fibers "get wet". For this reason in (absence of gravity) the drops of water are round or even exist. Some substances repel water. It is said they are hydrophobes. Water does not mix with oil, etc..

And here i am. Oil. What is oil made of. Fatty acids are not polar and for that reason they do not mix with water like it is said even in the Bible.

Phospholipids are fatty acids at one end and a phosphate group at the other. The are polar but only at one end (does this make sense to anyone) and still do not mix with water. Their phosphate heads would want to dissolve in water however their fatty tails do not. So they cling to each other forming a natural bilayer.

No matter what. If you throw some phospholipids (by the chemical formula above) in the water, you'll get a bilayer. For some reason that is within the same terms above, the phospolipids bilayers in water close in spheres like water drops in air though empty inside. Chemists call those micelles.

So from the beginning we had bipolarity, phobia, attraction and as we'll see later, some cannibalism. I can see now how confusing is for scientists to deal with all these.

It's no secret by now. All living things are made of these. It's also how it all started. Bilayers.

Everywhere i went to read about, it's a big dilemma. I mean, nowadays we have lipids, fatty acids, everywhere because they are synthesized by the living cells. Back then? Where they came from? To form the first micelle that is. That in billions of years got populated with DNA, ribosomes, all the good things that make a true cell which can divide and multiply.

In the beginning or 4 billion years ago they were only prokariotes. I bet it's a greek word. Nevermind that. Then it came eukariotes, 2 billions later. In the early 90s the old prokariotes were separated in two groups. Bacteria and archaea. These are the oldest living things on earth. They can be only unicellular. That is they do not combine with other of their kind to make an organism. And then, 2 billion years ago a bacteria ate another of its kind and did not digest it but the prey became the first nucleus of an newly created cell. The first eukariote. Or so they say.

And since we have such a neat distinction between the only two existing types of living cells, we can study them by comparison.

First. Eukariotes have a nucleus to keep their DNA togehter (DNA inside nucleus on left, the only thing not shown in this picture. Also not named the detailed components of the membrane and the peptidoglycan strata on the right).

Eukaryotes are much more evolved. They have by example mitochondria, an organelle that produces energy for the rest of the cell. Ribosome for synthesizing proteins. (Though a bit confusing. What do they mean by orders?) A bunch of other stuff. They evolved to make the multicelullar organisms we know today as plants or animals. But they can't live by themselves. That is they need to be fed with nutrients, oxygen and get rid of waste products, like carbon dioxide, urea, name it. However, they have the original bilayer while the prokariotes have more strata of membranes. That is because the prokariotes, or todays bacteria, live by themselves while the eukariotes within an extracellular matrix. Be it of cellulose, like in plants, or collagen like in animals. In the picture, plant cells in their cellulose matrix, from the same article in Live Science.
Viruses. Viruses are not living things. That is they cannot reproduce or perform any cell's function. They just sit there and wait to get inside a cell where they can make copies of themselves and in the process destroying that cell and that's it. They have though the same bilayer membrane of the eukariotes cells. Otherwise they could not merge with them, to implant their RNA inside the infected cell, from where many copies of the virus will emerge, probably using pieces of the bilayer of the host cell in the final assembly.

Never heard of a virus attacking a bacteria, because they have a much thicker membrane. What do you know... They have special viruses which are encapsulated in protein that can attack bacteria.

Since i mentioned penicillin. I think heard it before, wanted to see it one more time. Penicillin bursts bacteria's wall. That is the peptidoglycans part of the more structured bacterial (prokaryotes) wall. That BTW includes a bylipid component. It is understood. If you destroy the peptidoglycans, bylipid doesn't even matter. The bacteria cannot survive. Because it does not live inside the Extra Cellular Matrix. The reason penicillin does not kill all the cells in your body is because they don't have a peptidoglycan cell wall.  What?

Question. How the  coronavirus with its fragile bilayer only as membrane gets through the ECM (Ectra Celullar Matrix) to reach inside an eukariote cell?

There is only one answer to this. Only if the ECM is damaged exposing the cells. However, if this would happen the cells without the strong membrane of an autonomous prokaryote, would immediately fall apart. Or maybe the eukariote falls from its matrix inside blood stream and it's only there the virus attacks.

Got a bit tired. Need to re-read and continue.

Căutări google și alte probleme distincte

Am citit știrile din România. Ca în fiecare an, apare problema autotomiei Ținutului Secuiesc. Cineva, de obicei cineva din UDMR introduce un proiect de lege în parlament la începutul anului. După ce urmează un traseu mai lung sau mai scurt, proiectul pică după câteva luni sau sute de articole în media. Între timp, mii de români se frământă și își ocupă timpul care ar fi fost folosit mai bine în rezolvarea altor probleme.

M-aș fi agitat ca în alți ani, aș fi citat din  Constituție, etc.. Dacă nu aș ști că este doar un mod de a distrage. Sistematic, ca și sărbătorile naționale. Adică ciclic. Unii stau la cotitură și reciclează mereu și mereu toate prilejurile programate de a distrage atenția. Îmi vine aici în minte o melodie de Cindy Lauper (Gizi Fekete). Time after time.

Pe când autonomia românilor față de ocupația ocultă maghiară, ungară, secuiască, sarmațiană sau șerpiliană? Toate funcțiile publice și toate pozițiile de influențare prin artă și cultură sunt deținute de o versiune a speciei umane cu alte caracteristici decât cele pe care le știm noi. Inteligență, vivacitate, voracitate, colaborare tacită și absolută între ei și cine știe ce alte chestii. Un lucru e sigur. Ei ne citesc pe noi, noi nu îi putem descifra.

Am intrat pe un site și am văzut niște comentarii la un articol mai din josul paginii și am văzut că un tip care scria acolo (le spune postaci fiindcă comentaci nu rimează), nu știe să facă o căutare google pe imagini. Deci poți să intri și să scrii un comentariu dar nu poți să faci o căutare google?

Mergi pe stradă sau încet pe aleea din complex cu mașina. Destul de stresant fiindcă la orice colț pot apărea pietoni, care în SUA au prioritate absolută. Adică nici nu se uită când traversează aleea. La un moment dat apare o tipă sau un tip, care par sănătoși fizic, și se apleacă conștiincios în față sub un motiv oarecare, să ia ceva de jos etc. arătându-ți fundul, formând un fel de literă A cu picioarele. Dacă privești din profil, apare ca un echer. Dacă privești din spate, sau cum ți se oferă, apare ca un compas sau după cum am spus, litera A. Mergi mai departe, atent. Imaginea s-a săpat în subconștient.

În următoarele ore apare reacția psihofiziologică. Ți se blochează puțin digestia. Nu știu mecanismul, probabil nu îl știu nici ei. Dar te afectează în moduri multiple în următoarele ore, începând cu blocarea gazelor în intestin cu ridicarea diafragmei și a inimii. În funcție de starea de sănătate, oboseală, pot apărea probleme multiple care pot ține până la 24 de ore. De obicei, dificultate în respirație. Unele pot fi foarte grave. În România, la Bacău, eram încă student am ajuns odată la spital cu dureri groaznice de stomac și o doctoriță care probabil știa ce se întâmplă, mi-a făcut o injecție cu scobutil. Pe bază de scopolamină. Un medicament eminamente românesc, ca și algocalminul, antinevralgicul și polidinul. În jumătate de oră eram ok.

Odată însă în SUA, în jur de 2005 dar nu-mi amintesc acum exact, m-am culcat după ce am băut un pahar de vin. M-am trezit după o oră cu inima bătând foarte repede. Mi-am pus oximetrul pe deget. Aveam 180. Am sunat la 911. Afară totul era acoperit de polei. Am reușit să merg la toaletă ceea ce probabil mi-a salvat viață mai târziu. De obicei, când sunam, vene ambulanța în câteva minute (am mai spus, am avut ani când mergeam la urgențe în fiecare săptămână), dar atunci nu mai venea. M-am dus în parcare, cu oximetrul pe deget, care arăta cam același puls, spre 200, m-am urcat în mașină, care avea un strat de gheață pe parbriz, am deschis geamul, am scos capul pe geam și am pornit spre spital, care era la vreo 4-5 km pe autostradă. Din derapaj în derapaj, noaptea pe drumul pustiu, am ajuns în spatele mașinii poliției, care stătea la un semafor. Am ajuns la spital, un doctor șmecher m-a speriat și  mi-a spus că are un medicament foarte puternic și vrea să-mi facă o perfuzie. Nu știu de ce, l-am refuzat. Mi-au luat analize, ECG, pulsul era tot așa. Diagnostic pe ECG. Fibrilație atrială cu răspuns ventricular rapid. A venit și Angela, nu știu cum a condus pe gheața aia. La un moment dat a mai venit o doctoriță, neagră, atât de neagră și urâtă cum nu am văzut în viața mea. Am auzit-o vorbind cu doctorul care spunea: Trebuie să-l adormim, nu avem altă soluție. A venit doctorița aia spre mine și m-a împins într-o parte fiindcă eram în direcția unde vroia să meargă (eram în picioare, nu vroiam să stau culcat). M-am enervat așa de tare încât... imediat pulsul pe monitor a scăzut la normal. Stătusem cu puls în jur de 180 cam o oră și jumătate. Cred că pur și simplu erau gaze intestinale care au apăsat pe diafragmă și răsucit inima. De la vrăji. Și m-au salvat tot cu vrăji. Nu știu de ce au făcut efortul.

2015 toamna. Nu mult după ce m-am mutat aici în Tualatin. Vecinul de sus pe atunci semăna cu... Pacepa. Am fost undeva, am venit acasă, Angela a făcut niște pește cu mujdei. Am luat câteva înghițituri, mi s-a blocat mâncarea în esofag. Era a doua oară când mi s-a întâmplat faza. Am ieșit afară să merg la spital. Tipul de sus era în parcare și se uita la mine ca un judecător de inchiziție. Am ajuns la spital. La recepție era o tipă solidă, care a făcut un gest spre mine, nu știu, nu-mi amintesc exact. Ca și cum ar înghiți. În momentul acela am înghițit și eu, și cu multă durere (aveam esofagul foarte iritat, probabil de la praf după multe ore de plimbare în apartamentul de sus), bolul alimentar a coborât în stomac.

Faza s-a repetat de mai multe ori. Prima dată la ocean, în 2012, pe o plajă plină de călătorii care s-au dat jos dintr-o navă de croazieră, în Astoria (Oregon). Odată am stat 4 ore în așteptare pentru a intra la urgențe. Am ajuns în triaj. Tipa aia mi-a spus niște chestii, m-am enervat, m-am dus acasă și m-am culcat așa. Mi-a trecut noaptea în somn.

Am citit în mai multe ocazii. Dacă nu ai inima sănătoasă la o fază din asta poți să dai colțul.

Mă gândesc acum. Nu ți-ar putea aspira esofagul, la urgențe?

A doua oară când am fost la Festivalul OZN de la McMinville (unde se spune că odată, prin anii 60 a fost văzut un ozn). După, ne-am dus la cazino. Acolo mi-era foame și m-am dus la fast food unde am luat niște teryaki cu orez care stătuse multe ore sub becul acela și era cam uscat. Un tip tânăr, roșcat, jovial și rotofei la față, care astăzi știu sigur că era un actor din Ungaria, dădea cu mătura chiar când am înghițit primele dăți. Mi s-a blocat orezul acela cu carne în esofag. Am pornit înapoi. Pe drum, m-am oprit la un spital lângă aeroportul tot din McMinville. Am încercat să vomit în parcare, erau niște "mexicani" care se uitau urât la mine și n-am putut. Pe drum nu mă puteam gândi decât la ... chew back ah! (cred că trigger-ul a fost tipul ăla blond de lângă cărucior care își trăgea genunchiul la piept, ca într-o poziție de yoga). Am ajuns în sfârșit acasă. Am luat niște apă cu bicarbonat, am avut niște dureri îngrozitoare fiindcă esofagul era deja plin (înghițisem prea mult, de acord) după care esofagul s-a golit și mi-a trecut.

Deci există gesturi sau ansambluri de gesturi care pot provoca în general blocaje digestive. Sfincterele sau chakras. Mă îngrozește faptul că aceste gesturi, care pot fi unele din așa zise "semne masonice" pot fi făcute la televizor sau chiar prinse în fotografii pe site-uri.

Astăzi m-am trezit la ora 4 cu usturime pe esofag. Aceeași chestie. Însă din cauză că s-a repetat de atâtea ori, acum mă doare până și coloana. Mi-am amintit că am văzut cel puțin o tipă făcând gestul ieri aici în complex. Am stat jumătate de oră nemișcat. Am încercat să-mi amintesc cât e ora, ce am făcut ieri, câte ore am dormit (băusem câteva pahare la culcare). Am luat puțin bicarbonat, mi-a mai trecut, am citit știrile, m-am enervat, m-a luat iar. Am mai luat bicarbonat și mi-am pus perna electrică la spate. În câteva minute am simțit cum stomacul începe să se golească.

Afară, începând de când m-am trezit la 4, cânta pasărea spin. Se sincroniza cu respirația mea. În sfârșit a tăcut după 2 ore. Sus, am simțit câteva mișcări, după care, ca de fiecare dată, camera părea că se umple de un miros ca de ghips coclit (sulf, din pereții de panouri de ghips).

E 6 dimineața, a apărut lumina, Angela e trează, pleacă la servici. Pereții au început să vibreze de la o țeavă de eșapament modificată. Mă duc să iau o lanternă să examinez pereții să văd ce găuri au mai apărut ieri. După atâția ani, mi-am dezvoltat un fel de simț. Mă duc cu lanterna în mână în fața zonei de perete unde simt mirosul și îmi întreb intuiția. Oare unde  poate să fie gaura? cu o probă dentară (un cârlig ascuțit ca un ac cu mâner) palpez zona. Mici cratere suspecte acoperite de vopsea. De cele mai multe ori, găsesc o gaură. Unele apar vechi (numărul de chiriași în 40 de ani de când a fost construită locuința). O simplă gaură de pioneză care nu a fost acoperită și peste care s-a vopsit poate duce la umplerea camerei cu miros de perete, la vibrații. O repar cu puțin ghips, exact ca la dentist. Altele sunt noi, ca și cum ar fi fost făcute cu zi două înainte.

Am întrebat-o pe Angela dacă ține minte anul cu fibrilația. Am vorbit normal, dar sus a început în acea secundă vânzoleala. Ce e azi? Miercuri, cred că lucrează după amiază. Adică stă acasă până la 1 după amiază sau când se termină bursa (4 pe coasta de est).

E 7. Mi se face somn. Mă ducă să-mi fac un ceai de plante și mă culc. Îmi pare bine că mi-am mai golit povara cu amintiri neplăcute. În acest moment, niște izbituri puternice, ca și cum cineva s-ar fi împiedicat, deasupra.

10:45 AM. Am dormit suficient. Mintea mi s-a limpezit complet.

Ce am vrut și am uitat să mai spun aici.

Blocajul digestiv cu cauze pshiofiziologice pe termen lung poate duce la următoarele: Blocarea vărsării amestecului secrețiilor biliare/pancreatice, cu steatoză, pancreatită și diabet, din cauza presiunii crescute în abdomen. Constipație cronică. Hernie hiatală cu deschiderea semi-permanentă a sfincterului deasupra stomacului. Erodarea esofagului și inflamarea plămânilor, din cauza acidității crescute în stomac și deschiderea sfincterului cu esofagul, care permite vaporilor de acid din stomac să ajungă în plămâni. În funcție de nutriție, starea de sănătate generală, alți poluanți precum praf, se pot ajunge la infecții, pneumonii, etc..

Un tip special de poluanți ar fi enzime digestive ne-umane, proteaze de tip kallikrein, prezente în saliva cârtițelor, care le folosesc pentru a amorți un număr mare de râme, până la ordinul miilor pe care le țin vii cu lunile în niște galerii subterane, nu foarte adânc și care pot fi foarte aproape de locuința dvs.. Aceste enzime se combină cu praful și pot fi respirate, contribuind la auto-digerarea aparatului dvs. digestiv, după ce sunt eliminate din plămâni în esofag. Enzimele sunt niște substanțe foarte ciudate, de tip catalizatori, care se reciclează într-o reacție și în cantități extrem de mici pot conduce la reacții de descompunere a proteinelor prezente în mucoasa din esofag și stomac. Kallikreinele din saliva cârtițelor, care au evoluat și au devenit toxice, pot da și efecte neurologice, de exemplu o stare de amorțeală, lipsă a voinței dar și un high.

Este posibil ca sunătoarea (cunoscută ca și St.Johns Wort), care este cunoscută ca fi un inhibitor pentru anumite enzime, să fie un antidot. În medicina tradițională românească sunătoarea este folosită pentru tratarea afecțiunilor digestive iar în cea americană pentru depresie.

Awake Intubation

I wish i could describe this.

Because of the many interruptions and aggravations with noises, i deleted a long comment on fb i wrote about atelectasis and i got mad that turned into enough motivation to get on the blog and write it all again.

I slept 6 hours and awoke about 2 hours ago and ever since everything that i'm doing is being accompanied by an orchestra of noises. Only thing is they don't seem random but coordinated and synced to what i'm doing. It's like dozens if not hundreds of people use their daily activities guided by a director with the only purpose of interacting and influencing what i'm doing. I mean they do something that can be called daily routines, maybe only slightly exaggerated (most of cars by examples have modified exhausts and one starts every half hour and roars for 10 minutes), but with pauses and break points that can be slightly adjusted by a director or something. One of the effects is i can hardly concentrate. That is if i even am completely awake.

I was outside, could not find any open mole holes in the immediate vicinity of the building. In fact it smells like clean air. When i got back inside, the same old smell of rotten earthworms.

Atelectasis is a very common complication of general anesthesia. Few people, and even those who went through major surgeries know about.

You do not go to sleep. You are being sedated to the point you loose consciousnesses and get paralyzed.

Loosing all pain and feeling comes with a price. You cannot breath on your own anymore. After the sedative is injected in your IV, a skilled anesthesiologist is ready with a tube in his hand and introduce it in your trachea (windpipe) within seconds of you loosing consciousness and stop breathing. It's called intubation. The same second they start the ventilator which pumps rhythmically oxygen or a mixture into your lungs, mimicking breathing. From that moment on until you are weened of the sedative and wake up, your life from this point of view depends on the anesthesiologist. He has to figure how much sedative you are given, how much oxygen, how fast the ventilator should work taking in account lots of parameters.

Your diaphragm muscle is responsible for about half of the volume of air getting to your lungs (the other half is done by your rib cage). When all those muscles get paralyzed, both of the rib cage and diaphragm, any abdominal pressure due to gas (bloating) caused by the food you last ate before surgery may press on the diaphragm muscle during the breath out phase or when the ventilator let the air out of your lungs and tear that muscle to the point it presses against your lungs and collapses them. I bet this parameter is not monitored by the anesthesiologist in any way, because they can give you pure oxygen and you can breath during those hours with maybe half of your lungs capacity and he gets you out of there alive but then after you have to go for a treatment for that collapsed lung which usually is long and not always 100% successful.

About the awake intubation. How weird this is, in the medical world, you may read the results of this google search. I mean  theoretically it can be done, a doctor can insert a tube on your trachea without sedation. But aren't you going to want to throw up right away? With local anesthesia and even with light general sedation i bet not many people can take it for more than a few hours, not even thinking about days. You'd have to be fully sedated (induced comma) to take that for a week as i saw claims in media.

On the other hand. Can't do general anesthesia without an anesthesiologist on the spot. (Michael Jackson, remember). I believe it's a rule (at least common sense is telling me that). So who's gonna tell me that all the people that have been on a ventilator had an anesthesiologist next to them, 24/7?

One more reason not to believe every or anything is written these days like always in the media.

Naga

Vinca couple

Naga couple

It's a bird. It's a snake.

Catholic Church in Vinga, Romania belongs to Hungarian minority. Could the name Hungary, which in Romanian is Ungaria be linguistically related to Vinga and with Huns or noongars. (Later Maygars, possibly from Magars from north-eastern India and Nepal, birth place of Buddha, Budapest).

Naga godess from Belur, India

Hungarian folk costume

Vinca head

Emu birds, cangoroos done on orange color on a cave fresco in Europe?

A Pen Guin on Attila's shield?

This is so weird i need to mention. And still, not so, after all penguins are birds. How about Venus, Vinca, Vienna maybe?

Yeah, the title. Nagy means great in Hungarian, naga means dragon in Indonesian etc.. It could come from Noongars. The Pama-Nyungan group of aboriginal languages started suddenly 3000 years BC (or could it be a few thousand years earlier) and the original population disappeared. Could they have mass migrated in Eurasia?

However something else just crossed my mind. I heard about gene editing by means of viruses. Can this happen spontaneously in nature. Like a virus infecting an embryo in earliest stages and cause insertion of genes from a different species?

Superman, spiderman, batman, X-men, things like that? Serbia, Sarpa, Seraphim. Could this be the real significance of the Yin-Yang symbol?

It's a bird. It's a snake. It's a god (of creation).

What if Darwin didn't say all the truth and selection is accelerated by mutations by viruses that may carry genes from one species to another. If such mutations occurred in an isolated group of humans which came in contact with the remnants of the old human population maybe after the flood (thawing of the last ice age) and mixed with the remnants of the old humans and repopulating  the planet could it had be the reason for dramatically shortening the life span of humans, as described in Bible (Matusalemme) who also became much more cunning and aggressive, while keeping a nucleus of the original mutation with most foreign genes to this day. 

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.