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Munich researcher reveals: Because of this substance, the coronavirus can penetrate every cell in the body

2020-10-23T03:16:03.852Z


Doctors worldwide are concerned with the question of how aggressive the coronavirus really is. Now the secret seems to have been revealed why it can penetrate body cells so well.


Doctors worldwide are concerned with the question of how aggressive the coronavirus really is.

Now the secret seems to have been revealed why it can penetrate body cells so well.

  • Various factors influence how serious a corona infection is.

    Among other things, the number of viruses * inhaled plays a role.

  • According to the current state of knowledge, coronaviruses enter the body primarily via the mucous membranes of the nose and mouth.

    But there they can spread - and cause serious symptoms.

  • A Munich researcher has now identified a protein that makes Sars-CoV-2 easier to penetrate into the body's cells.

The coronavirus reaches the mucous membranes of the mouth and nose, penetrates the body and is able to attack body cells and thus infect tissues and organs.

How exactly Sars-CoV-2 penetrates the cells has been and is intensively researched - and new studies on the subject are published.

One of the most recent publications suggests that a certain protein makes it much easier for the coronavirus to enter the cell.

Neuropilin-1 on the surface of body cells is said to enable coronaviruses to penetrate easily.

The influence of the protein Neuropilin-1 was discovered by Ludovico Cantuti-Castelvetri and his colleagues from the Technical University of Munich (TU Munich).

The research team investigated how Sars-CoV-2 differs from Sars-CoV, the causative agent of the Sars pandemic of 2003.

The question that drove the scientists:

Why was Sars far less contagious than Sars-CoV-2

and why did Sars only affect the lower respiratory tract and not other types of tissue, as is currently the case with Sars-CoV-2?

Also read

: Corona research: This is how the virus really penetrates the body.

This is why the Sars-CoV-2 coronavirus is more aggressive than its predecessor Sars

A comparison of the two different coronaviruses led the researchers at the Technical University of Munich to conclude that the so-called spike proteins of Sars-CoV and Sars-CoV-2 differ.

With these, the viruses dock on receptors on the surfaces of body cells.

The receptors are ACE2 proteins that enable the virus to enter the cell.

The cells that carry the ACE2 receptor include the mucous membranes of the nose and lungs

, as Focus.de informs.

The Munich researchers explain why the “new” coronavirus can attack so many different tissues and organs as follows: “The Sars-CoV-2 spike protein differs from its older relative by the addition of a furin cleavage site,” quotes Focus .de study author Mikael Simons.

As a result, an amino acid sequence can be exposed that can be placed on other cell receptors - so-called neuropilins.

To find out whether Sars-CoV-2 can also use these additional docking points, the scientists carried out further tests.

Their result:

if a body cell has three receptors - neuropilin, ACE2 proteins and TMPRSS2 (also a protein on body cells that helps viruses dock) - on its surface, the infection rate was significantly higher than with cells that only have the two known docking sites ACE2 and TMPRSS2

.

In theory, the discovery of this new door opener could also offer a new approach to ward off the coronavirus, according to Focus.de.

In initial tests on cell cultures, blocking neuropilin-1 by antibodies would have suppressed infection of the cells with Sars-CoV-2.

(jg)

 *

Merkur.de is part of the nationwide Ippen-Digital editors network

.

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Source: merkur

All life articles on 2020-10-23

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