3) But damn if some viruses aren’t smarter still. For example, the herpes virus called cytomegalovirus (sounds like a virus from Cybertron) produces a decoy MHC pedestal that cons NK cells into thinking everything is ok, a walk on by. Like a battle between black & white hats...

...viruses & the hosts they infect keep trying to outdo one another. It’s like the Red Queen’s race in Alice in Wonderland. You have to run as fast as you can just to stay where you are & faster still to get ahead. (btw, biotechnology is how we can outrun viruses).

But back to the hacks. We’ve only scratched the surface of their arsenal. 4) HIV infects our immune cells. It’s a cop killer. And it does it’s best job of infecting these T cells when they are activated. So any T cells that tries to go after HIV walks right into virus’s arms.

One current approach to beating HIV is to engineer T cells that HIV can’t infect. Basically, give them Kevlar. Want to know how? We use a harmless mutated HIV virus to introduce those protective genes into T cells. Turn the virus on itself! Anyway, back to the virus hacks.

5) HIV writes itself into the DNA code of the cells it infects and can then go to sleep for years in that cell. Those sleeper cells look normal for a while so don’t raise any alarms but the viral code within them can reactive after many years to start making new HIV.

So you basically can’t wipe out HIV without getting rid of those sleeper cells. That’s not impossible, but so far that’s only possibly with a complete bone marrow transplant, and even then only if the donor cells have a special mutation that makes them impervious to HIV.

6) Now rabies is a devil. It infects neurons and is secreted in saliva. It’s transmitted from one animal to another via a bite. Some infected animals become more aggressive, more likely to bite. Why? It’s thought that virus’s external protein, which lets it infect cells, also...

...interferes with serotonin in the brain, basically making the animals deeply insecure (ever hear of fear-biting?). It’s like anti-Prozac (eg depressed people can be more aggressive). That makes the animals more likely to bite even unprovoked, spreading the rabies virus.

7-9) Cells are booby-trapped with virus-detecting sensors (eg Toll-Like Receptors) that trigger (via interferon response) the cell to self-destruct (apoptosis). Viruses evolved counter-measures to A) disable sensors, B) silence internal alarm, & C) block the auto-destruct.

It’s like Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark, having to circumvent all the crazy, ancient defenses. Harrison Ford would be one cool virus. Except for analogy to work, he would need to break in to get access to cloning technology. Sounds perfect for Netflix.

10) And then there are face swapping tricks of viruses like flu & HIV, which can alter their external proteins faster than our immune systems can keep up. It’s why we need new flu vaccine each year. These viruses have frilly (ie variable) regions on their surface proteins that...

...protect the functional parts that let the virus infect cells, like the tassels on a hunter’s camo suit shield the person from being recognized. These mutate easily without impairing the virus’s ability to function.

So what tricks does SARS2 have up its sleeve? A) Like flu, it changes its appearance, but actually quite slowly (despite what media reports), so we can make a vaccine & expect it to work for a while. B) It’s got a protein that shuts down our cells’ interferon response...

...basically cutting the tripwire that would activate a cell’s antiviral defenses. C) Also, like many viruses, SARS2 has to deal with a defense cells have where they basically print all their instructions for making proteins on RNA that has a special “cap” telling...

...the cell’s protein making machinery that these are reliable instructions. Think of it like official factory letterhead. If the protein-making machinery sees instructions printed on unofficial RNA w/o the cap, it knows there’s an intruder & activates the auto-destruct alarm.

So SARS2 has a protein that puts official caps (letterhead) on the viral instructions for making more viral proteins. Clever workaround. There are about 8 proteins that SARS2 uses to hide itself from our cell defenses and immune system like that.

So SARS2 is hardly dumb. Yet all we need to stop it is a vaccine that gives our immune system a head start. Without the element of surprise, SARS2 will either fail to infect or will cause only a mild infection. We’ll have won the Red Queen’s race with a bit of biotechnology.

For more covid Q&A and to read about ways we’ve tamed viruses to help us beat diseases (turned black hats into white hats), check out my pinned tweet. Hope your kids decide to become scientists and maybe even study virology - it’s a great on-ramp into biotechnology.

And to see all the biotechnology that humankind is working on to combat SARS2 & treat COVID-19, check out giant map our team assembled. http://www.racap.com/covid-19  That’s just for Covid. I could show you one like this for every disease- biotechnology is revolutionizing medicine.

ps leave it to the virologist to misspell “hoodie” and notice it right after hitting “tweet all”.