Tweetorial on antigenic drift of viruses.

New strains of #COVID19 are inevitable. The virus is a single stranded RNA which is flimsy and prone to replication error like all single stranded RNA viruses

Antigenic drift is when genetic variations occur by random the mutations 1/3

In #COVID19 #SARSCoV2 if you get infected with the old strain, you may not be immune to the new strain.

Eg. single stranded RNA virus genes that code for virus-surface proteins that host antibodies recognize may change

Your body doesn’t “save” every single antibody it used 2/3

Your body only keeps the B cells that produce IgG antibodies that recognize the antigen very tightly used to finally clear the infection are kept. These become your memory B cells

This is why it’s challenging to come up with universal flu vaccines & probably #COVID19 3/3

to clarify, body gets rid of the more “loosely” binding ABs it used to contain virus initially

These early ABs are NOT kept around & body has to start the entire process again to find an antibody that will neutralize & bind to the new antigen on newer version of corona 4/3

This antigenic drift has implications for reopening, vaccine development, future drug development treatments, public health plans.

Eg If the target of vaccine is for eg wrong version of spike protein

I’m bad at planning number of tweets/3