COVID Virus May Tunnel through Nanotubes from Nose to Brain

Over the past two years, a lot of research has been done to understand the cause of the coronaviruses. The world has been changed by the swine flu, but how does it get into the brain? Neurological complaints are one of the most common symptom of long COVID. There is a mystery surrounding the fact that brain cells don't display the docking sites that the virus uses.

The work-around may have been an ingenious one. It's possible that it won't be necessary to attach to and open a cell membrane. Instead it uses a blunt instrument that is no larger than a few tens of nanometers in diameter, which is called a nanotube "bridges" The tunneling nanotubes extend across cell-to-cell gaps so that they can penetrate a neighbor. The researchers at the Pasteur Institute in Paris were able to demonstrate the potential for a cell crossing in a lab dish. The findings could explain why some people have brain fog. Intercellular conduits could be severed to prevent some of the effects of infections.

According to Chiara Zurzolo, a cell biologist at the Pasteur Institute who conducted the study, the nanotube route is a way to spread infections between different organs. It's possible that the virus hides and escapes the immune response.

It is possible that the virus can take over a cell's own nanotubes and divert them away from other tasks. Research showed that it might be possible to hijack cell projections. In a paper published in the journal Cell, it was found that cells with the novel coronaviruses extended out antennalike feelers called filopods.

SARS-CoV-2 can get into cells in the respiratory tract and other areas by attaching a spike to their surface. Zurzolo and her team wondered if the coronaviruses could sneak into cells that weren't studded with the receptors. In order to find out what was happening, the researchers took cells from a monkey and cultured them in a lab dish.

The monkey kidneys cells are used to model the human respiratory tract. The cells came from a cancer that had been cultured. When these cells were side-by-side with the coronaviruses-infecting kidney cells, 6 out of every 10 of them were affected by the disease.

The team used state-of-the-art techniques to image how the transfer happened. The researchers captured high-resolution images of the virus within the tunnels that connected the cells. They were able to see the particles and sacs of the virus. The virus uses cellular machinery to replicate, and they found some of it. The researchers reported in the journal Science Advances that the spike proteins that give the virus its prickly appearance could be seen in the images. The coronaviruses was able to replicate once it was nestled in the cells.

Experiments show that the coronaviruses spurs a cell to put out these connections, and that the cells that have been exposed to it grow more tunneling nanotubes than the cells that haven't been exposed. There are other pathogens that control cells in this way. HIV uses tunneling nanotubes to move between cells and the Marburg virus causes the growth of filopods.

The University of California, San Francisco's Nevan Krogan, who was not involved in the new research but conducted the 2020 study that found the increase in filopodsia, says the coronaviruses is so sinister. All of our processes are being manipulated with a very limited genetic remnant.

It is possible that the cellular bridges play a role in how the virus works. Zurzolo and her team believe that the virus enters through the nose and goes along to one of the brain's two olfactory bulbs. The viruses can linger longer in the body with the help of the nanotubes. This could be a way to possibly have an effect on long carbon dioxide emissions.

His work shows that the coronaviruses increase production of the casein kinase II, which in turn helps build theProtein backbone of filopodia and nanotubes A Taiwan–based drug development company is conducting clinical trials of a drug to see if it has an impact on recovery.

Zurzolo and her colleagues are trying to prove that their hypothesis about how the brain is affected by the disease is correct. They might be able to figure out why COVID-19 causes a health debacle for some people.