As expected by everyone as SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 has turned, for the past 20 years, a feverish study is still attempting to solve a long-standing puzzle.
How certainly the pandemic virus that has so changed the whole world is crossing over into the brain after it enters the respiratory system remains a question, a Scientific American report said.
Nanotubes may provide a cunning answer to the mystery of how the virus that causes COVID infects neurons and produces long-lasting neurological symptoms https://t.co/lS0lXBcg7T
— Scientific American (@sciam) July 20, 2022
An answer is essential as neurological complaints are some of the most typical symptoms constellation known as long COVID.
The mystery centers around the fact that the brain cells are not exhibiting the receptors or docking areas the virus uses to enter nasal and lung cells.
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Instrument in the Form of Nanotube Bridges
SARS-CoV-2, nonetheless, may have come up with an innovative workaround. It may do away with the molecular maneuverings required to attach to and unlock a cell membrane.
Rather, it's exerting a sharp instrument in the form of nanotube bridges, cylinders built of the standard common protein actin that is no more than a few tens of nanometers in terms of diameter.
Such tunneling nanotubes extend through cell-to-cell gaps to penetrate a neighbor and provide viral particles a direct route into COVID-impervious tissue.
The Paris-based Pasteur Institute researchers showed the prospects for a nanotube-mediated cell that crosses in a study in a laboratory dish that now needs to be verified in infected human patients.
Brain Fog and Neurological Symptoms Experienced
Given more proof, the findings published in the Science Advances journal could explain why people who get infected with COVID-19 are experiencing brain fog and other neurological symptoms.
Furthermore, if the intercellular tubes could be severed, that might stop some of such debilitating post-effects of the virus.
According to the Pasteur Institute cell biologist Chiara Zurzolo, "the nanotube route is a shortcut," propagating infection rapidly between different organs, whether permissive or not, to the infection. More so, she added, this might be an approach, too, for the virus to hide and eventually evade the immune response.
The virus may be capable of seizing a cell's own nanotubes, diverting them from other routine tasks like transferring lipids and proteins between cells.
Other Diseases Taking Advantage of Tunneling Nanotubes
A similar New Scientist report specified that the experiment also revealed that cells infected with the COVID-19 virus grew far more tunneling nanotubes than uninfected cells, suggesting that the virus itself is spurring a cell to put out such connectors. Essentially, SARS-CoV-2 is not the only pathogen that controls cells in this manner.
Moreover, HIV is also taking advantage of tunneling nanotubes to move between cells, and the Marburg virus is stimulating the growth of filopodia.
Molecular biologist Nevan Krogan from the University of California, San Francisco, explained that the virus is quite sinister.
Krogan, who was not part of this new study but carried out the 2020 research that showed the rise in filopodia following COVID-19 infection, added that it manipulates all the processes with a very limited genetic repertoire.
Related information about COVID-19 causing brain damage is shown on DW News's YouTube video below:
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