The Coronaviridae - 2

Downtown Ribosome

This series is about only the genes of certain viruses, however, that virus family has become quite infamous over the past year (The Coronaviradae; On The Origin Of The Home Of COVID-19, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21).

I wrote in the previous post that I would share the location where anyone who wants to can download the data and check it out for themselves, so I am making good on that in this post.

I downloaded the data used in this series from Coronavirus genomes.

I selected the data in GBFF format (What is GBFF format?; cf. here).

I then built an SQL database using only genomes that have the genes of the viruses identified.

The result was 46,581 rows of data. 

The focus on genes is important because they are constructed in living microbes:

"Viruses are microscopic organisms that require a living cell, often called a host, to multiply. They largely consist of genetic material (either DNA or RNA) wrapped in a protein coat."

(The Conversation). At the molecular level the parts of a gene, the neucleotides, look the same in the sense that the atoms making up the molecules are the same for the same elements.

How the microbes that replicate the genes and other elements of the virus discern or distinguish one molecule from another in order to properly reproduce the viruses and other entities within the microbe is not well known to say the least. 

The following appendix list links to HTML tables which depict the quantity of genes in the Coronaviridae family in terms of research team collections in five countries: Appendix One, Appendix Two, Appendix Three, Appendix Four, and Appendix Five.

The next post in this series is here, previous post in this series is here.

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Son of Mr. Green Jeans ...

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