Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, March thirty one. I'm Oscar Ramires from the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is your
Speaker 1: daily coronavirus update. With coronavirus, it's all about the genetic mutations.
Speaker 1: Two critical mutations occurred. The first altered the spikes and
Speaker 1: the virus to allow it to latch on the proteins
Speaker 1: that lined the respiratory tract. The second mutation allowed the
Speaker 1: virus to grow a protein dagger that lets it bind
Speaker 1: tightly to throat and lung cells, making it infectious and deadly.
Speaker 1: Robert Bazell, professor of molecular, cellular and Developmental biology at Yale,
Speaker 1: joins US for coronavirus mutations. Thanks for joining us, Robert,
Speaker 1: my pleasure. I wanted to talk about coronavirus COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: and how it's changed. Um, you know, the genetic mutations
Speaker 1: that have helped turn it into what it is now. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a time, you know, we think
Speaker 1: this might have originated in bats and then traveled through
Speaker 1: another animal possibly then made its way to humans. There
Speaker 1: was a time where this might not have necessarily been
Speaker 1: dangerous to us, but there were mutations that happen over time,
Speaker 1: and here we are now. So Robert Canny tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that. Well, it's very common for
Speaker 1: this process, which is called zoonosis, which means that an
Speaker 1: animal virus that's harmless in one animal crosses species, it
Speaker 1: becomes harmful, And of course we care about it that
Speaker 1: when it happens to human beings, it happens among other
Speaker 1: species as well. But seventy of emerging infections in the
Speaker 1: United States and of all infections, are from animals. So
Speaker 1: is A is a serious source of disease in the
Speaker 1: human population and a continuing threat. We were we worried
Speaker 1: about it a lot in the past. We saw it
Speaker 1: with stars, which is another coronavirus, the same family as
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen. But it also happens with influenza, which comes
Speaker 1: from chickens and pigs and birds and other birds. And
Speaker 1: we let's do that one again. Influenza is one of
Speaker 1: the most common ones. But but it circulates constantly through
Speaker 1: the human population, but it also goes into pigs and
Speaker 1: chickens and other birds and that causes So that's one
Speaker 1: that we're we're very familiar with. There's also a constant
Speaker 1: fear that avian food, which is another kind of influenza
Speaker 1: that's in birds will mutate in a way that will
Speaker 1: become much more harmful the humans. And we've been watching
Speaker 1: for that for a long time. Is there a particular
Speaker 1: reason why some of these respiratory diseases like stars and
Speaker 1: all that in COVID nineteen now, is there a particular
Speaker 1: reason why they're in bats? Well, a lot of things
Speaker 1: are in bats. And the reason that they're in bats
Speaker 1: is that's make a wonderful home for a lot of
Speaker 1: creatures because bats are all over the place. If you
Speaker 1: look at bats in in the rainforest, they are on
Speaker 1: the top of the trees, they're on the on the
Speaker 1: floor there, and they're flying all around. So they are
Speaker 1: a fantastic vector for all kinds of viruses. And as
Speaker 1: a result of viruses are very comfortable with them, and
Speaker 1: from an evolutionary perspective, a lot of times they can
Speaker 1: move very happily in basses, get around all the time.
Speaker 1: I think it's very important, by the way, to point
Speaker 1: out when we keep talking about bats, and there have
Speaker 1: been articles about this that people hear about kind of
Speaker 1: horrible thing where a virus mutates, uh that's harmless to
Speaker 1: a bat that and becomes a pathogen and human beings
Speaker 1: that we don't go on some kind of campaign to
Speaker 1: go out and kill all the bats in the world.
Speaker 1: The average bat eats about eight thousand mosquitoes a day,
Speaker 1: so if you think about what you're losing when you
Speaker 1: kill a bat, it's pretty significant, and just in terms
Speaker 1: of the threat the human disease that's caused by the
Speaker 1: by mosquitoes and other insects and the bats eat for us.
Speaker 1: In your latest article, you wrote about two critical mutations
Speaker 1: that happened with this coronavirus. Can you talk about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are traced back and then this will take a
Speaker 1: while to work out, but it's important to understanding that
Speaker 1: you can't conture you can have more surveillance for this
Speaker 1: kind of again into the future. But the best guess
Speaker 1: is that it was a that virus that was not
Speaker 1: causing any harm in the bat, that it somehow underwent
Speaker 1: a mutation either within a bat or within a person
Speaker 1: or within an intermediate host of some kind of animal
Speaker 1: that was sold in a food market in China, and
Speaker 1: it became dangerous to human beings. The specific things that
Speaker 1: seem to be the most important is that it Uh,
Speaker 1: you're excusing. The specific thing that it seems to be
Speaker 1: most important is that it latches onto a protein called
Speaker 1: ACE two, a c E T two, which lines the
Speaker 1: r respiratory system, and that causes to get in destroyer
Speaker 1: cells and become more dangerous. And there's a second one
Speaker 1: that involves a protein that's slight is through uh, other
Speaker 1: proteins that we have on our respiratory system. That makes
Speaker 1: the binding much more strong and the disease much more infectious.
Speaker 1: And the thing we need to be be watching out
Speaker 1: for is if there would be any further mutations with
Speaker 1: this coronavirus, with this COVID nineteen, you know, as we
Speaker 1: race to get vaccines ready and other effective treatments, you know,
Speaker 1: if it changes mutates in any way, it could possibly
Speaker 1: change all of that. Yeah, that that's always a concern,
Speaker 1: and it seldom happens. There have been other viruses that
Speaker 1: come into the human population, and usually when they do,
Speaker 1: they reach a pretty stable state. The evolutionary goal of
Speaker 1: any creature encoding a virus is to just make more
Speaker 1: copies of itself. So right now, the COVID nineteen virus
Speaker 1: is making a lot of copies of itself and it's
Speaker 1: not under any evolutionary pressure to change, and we've seen
Speaker 1: that before. I mentioned in the article that j V
Speaker 1: is which has been around for a long time, probably
Speaker 1: since the n and it came from is another zoo
Speaker 1: want to infection. It came from chimpanzees to human beings,
Speaker 1: hasn't changed much. Even though there are mutations in the virus,
Speaker 1: they don't change the biology or it's infectiousness, or it's danger.
Speaker 1: Robert Bazell, Adjunct Professor of Molecular, Cellular, cellular, and Developmental
Speaker 1: Biology at the most complicatedly named department in any university.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much for joining us. Robert, my my pleasures.
Speaker 1: Thank you all right, Robert Bazell, adjunct Professor of Molecular, Cellular,
Speaker 1: and Developmental Biology at Yale, Thank you very much for
Speaker 1: joining us, My pleasure. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this has
Speaker 1: been your daily coronavirus update. Don't forget that. For today's
Speaker 1: big news stories, you can check me out on the
Speaker 1: Daily Dive podcast every Monday through Friday. So follow us
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