Research: Corona COVID-19 Virus is Strong, Resilient and Heat Resistant Even Outside the Host

Liputan6.com, Budapest – A research team in Hungary is puncturing the coronavirus COVID-19 with a fine needle to measure how much force it needs before it ‘pops’ like a balloon. It wasn’t destroyed.

The ‘body’ of Sars-CoV-2 – the name of the virus that causes COVID-19 – is about 80 nanometers wide, and the tip of the needle the researchers are using is much smaller than that. The tip goes from the top of the virus to the bottom. The virion was pinched, then immediately ‘bounced’ as the needle left.

The researchers repeated this 100 times on the same virus particle and it remains almost intact.

It is “very tough,” said the team led by Dr Miklos Kellermayer of Semmelweis University in Budapest in an un-peer-reviewed paper posted on biorxiv.org on Thursday, September 17, 2020. Asia One, Saturday (19/9/2020).

The new corona virus causes COVID-19 continues to surprise scientists with its unique structure. For example, a team from Tsinghua University in Beijing released the most detailed structural reconstruction of the virus in the journal Cell this week. They found that viruses can accumulate large amounts of nucleic acid bands that carry genetic data into tightly packed wraps.

However, the viruses used in this study and other previous studies were frozen in order to get a sharp and steady shot for the camera.

The Kellermayer team captured how the virus behaved while it was still alive. They placed virus particles on trays lined with a biological binding agent.

This material can fix the position of the virus. Under a laser-emitting atomic microscope, scientists play with the virus with needles to see how it responds to various stimuli.

Viruses usually become susceptible after leaving their host. But according to some studies, Sars-CoV-2 can withstand some everyday surfaces like cupboards.

How it manages to survive environmental disturbances is unclear.

The Hungarian team found that the virus envelope gave almost no resistance when the needle tip landed on the surface. As the tip goes further, the holding force peaks and then rapidly diminishes to almost nothing.

Their experimental data suggested Sars-Cov-2 could be the most physically elastic virus known to man so far, and that the repeated deformations did not appear to affect the overall structure and content within the virus either.

“Its mechanical and healing properties alone can ensure adaptation to a variety of environmental conditions,” said Kellermayer and his research colleagues.

Chinese scientists estimate that Sars-CoV-2 has 26 spike proteins (spine proteins) on its surface that can bind with host cells. Researchers at Cambridge University in England gave a similar estimate of 24. A study by researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany put the number 40.

Meanwhile, the Kellermayer research team said there were 61 protein spikes in their specimens. This suggests that the variability in the structure of the coronavirus COVID-19 could be bigger than expected, they said.

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