Molecular pathway found for critical cases of COVID-19. Free Technical Library News

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Molecular pathway found for critical cases of COVID-19

24.04.2022

An international team led by Chinese researchers has identified a molecular pathway that exacerbates the severity of critical COVID-19 cases, providing clues for a potential treatment for such cases.

A new study has shown that the fusion of coronavirus-infected lung cells can exacerbate inflammatory responses, thereby triggering immune signaling cascades in the lungs, which are a major factor in lung damage in patients with severe disease.

Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Peking Union Medical College and their collaborators analyzed post-mortem patient samples. They found a correlation between critical cases of COVID-19 and a fusion of lung epithelial cells called pneumocytes, which has also been seen in macaques and cultured cells infected with the virus.

They then examined human embryonic kidney cells that either expressed the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein that causes COVID-19 or were infected with the spike protein-bearing vesicular stomatitis virus.

The kidney cells eventually fused and formed new cells with multiple nuclei and tiny micronuclei that triggered a DNA sensor in cell fluids. And the sensor, in turn, recruited a protein that activates the expression of genes encoding type I interferons. These, according to the study, are expected to possibly further support inflammatory signaling.

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In our physical world, if you push any object, it, according to Newton's Second Law, begins to move away from you. But objects with negative mass will act contrary to this principle, the more you push them, the faster they will move in your direction. All this seems like an impossible thing, nevertheless, such an effect has long been theoretically substantiated and its manifestations were observed in some experiments. And recently, researchers at the University of Rochester completed the development of a device capable of producing particles with negative mass.

In experiments conducted by scientists at the University of Washington last year, a "fluid" consisting of a Bose-Einstein condensate, a cloud of rubidium atoms cooled to an ultra-low temperature by laser light, showed negative mass. In the device created by the Rochester researchers, the negative mass effect is exhibited by quasi-particles produced by fusing photons of laser light with excitons produced in a semiconductor material.

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Scientists from Rochester still continue to work, exploring the physics and behavior of particles with negative mass produced by the device they created. The field of practical application of this achievement has not yet been determined, but scientists are confident that the use of "negative" polaritons will make it possible to create more powerful and efficient lasers.

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