FLiRT – sounds cute doesn’t it?
Last December I saw in a pre-Christmas newspaper mention of a new Covid-19 ‘variant’, JN.1. As is the way with the press, the headlines included such dread predictions as, ‘JN.1: Should we be worried about the COVID variant in the run-up to Christmas?’ and ‘Symptoms of new Covid variant JN.1 that could make thousands ill over Christmas’.
In an interesting twist, by mid January, the headline in the New Scientist was a more realistic and more telling, ‘Covid-19 variant JN.1 is the mildest yet’!
FLiRT is a descendant of this aspiring, but ultimately failed, Grinch.
FLiRT was named by T. Ryan Gregory, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Guelph in Ontario because the genetic code of the virus (the programme it uses to build its structures) has changed in two places: at position 456 on its genetic code a change from phenylalanine (F) to leucine (L) and at position 346 on its genetic code from arginine (R) to threonine (T). I think the ‘i’ was just added for fun!
Phenylalanine leucine, arginine and threonine are ‘amino acids’, the building blocks of proteins (all the proteins in our bodies are built from just 20 of these amino acids) and because its genetic code programmes the manufacture of proteins which make up the structure of the virus, including the mechanisms it uses to infect our cells, changes in these building blocks change the virus.
If our bodies have learnt to detect and destroy a virus either through having an infection and/or a vaccination, changes in the structure of the virus make it more difficult for our immune defences to detect and destroy the virus.
How do new viral ‘strains’, ‘variants’ and even ‘subvariants’ that we read about happen, and why? And does this happen anywhere else or are viruses unique?
The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes the disease we call ‘Covid-19’ is a sub-microscopic doorway to exploring one of the greatest scientific concepts of all time: evolution. And once through this doorway, the vista that opens up may extend far beyond what our minds understand as ‘science’ into the very nature of the existence of which we are conscious.
And this has lead me on an as yet unfinished journey through the tiny doorway of SARS-CoV-2 into an exploration of nature of life, the universe and (with apologies to Douglas Adams) everything.
I would like to share with you my long and meandering tour through the evolution of my understanding of evolution in the coming months in these blog posts…
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