The spikes are mounted on the virus body (‘the nucleocapsid protein’). But the thing is, our vaccine is only generating the spikes itself, and we’re not mounting them on any kind of virus body.
It turns out that, unmodified, freestanding Spike proteins collapse into a different structure. If injected as a vaccine, this would indeed cause our bodies to develop immunity.. but only against the collapsed spike protein.
And the real SARS-CoV-2 shows up with the spiky Spike. The vaccine would not work very well in that case.
So what to do? In 2017 it was described how putting a double Proline substitution in just the right place would make the SARS-CoV-1 and MERS S proteins take up their ‘pre-fusion’ configuration, even without being part of the whole virus. This works because Proline is a very rigid amino acid. It acts as a kind of splint, stabilising the protein in the state we need to show to the immune system.
2020-12-29
wykład Jerzego Bralczyka
“an objective view from a professional musician”
a rogue-like deckbuilding card game
by Andrew Huang
“In some sense, being an independent artist means you work in sales. This is blindingly obvious to anyone who has been down that road, but I feel it is worth pointing out.”
standup by Gabriel Iglesias