Question

Coronavirus

Describe the virus’s adaptive strategies and what kind of selection would you ascribe this phenomenon to?

Answer 1

Receptor-mediated endocytosis is the process that virus uses to enter the cell preceding autophagy. SARS-CoV can direct early endosomes into autophagy during endosome sorting instead of endosome recycling back to plasma membrane.

Autophagy is a pathway used by cells to recycle damaged proteins and destroy pathogens, Therefore, whether autophagy inhibition or activation would be more effective against SARS-CoV-2 infection needed further exploration.

The rationale for all of these aims is that additional understanding of MERS-CoV cell entry pathways will identify correlates of robust infection and disease, and will also provide insights on the best ways to prevent infection and disease with innovative virus entry inhibitors.