Up until now, weĦŻve all seen representational images of the deadlynovel coronavirus, but now Indian scientists have revealed a microscopic imageof the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
According to reports, the images of the coronavirus have been taken by a team of ICMR-NIV scientists in Pune.?These images were captured using a transmission electron microscope and have been published in the Indian Journal of Medical Research.
The images of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19 disease,are from the throat swab of the first laboratory-confirmed case in Indiareported on January 30. The woman, among three students studying medicine inWuhan in China, was diagnosed with COVID-19 after returning to India.
Polymerase chain reaction is a method widely used inmolecular biology to rapidly make millions to billions of copies of a specificDNA sample allowing scientists to take a very small sample of DNA and amplifyit to a large enough amount to study in detail.
"In summary, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first report from India detecting the SARS-CoV-2 virus using TEM directly in athroat swab specimen confirmed by PCR..." the study said.
The article titled "Transmission electron microscopyimaging of SARS-CoV-2" has been authored by the ICMR-NIV NationalInfluenza Centre Team. The authors include Atanu Basu, deputy director and headof electron microscopy and pathology at NIV Pune.
According to the article, one particular virus particle wasvery well preserved, showing features very typical of coronaviruses. These bind only to certain receptors on the host cell.
According to the study, the description of a novel humancoronavirus, initially referred to as the Wuhan coronavirus (CoV), is currentlydesignated as a severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV-2 as per the latestInternational Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) classification. It isprobably the most recent human pneumonia virus with high outbreak potential.
This novel virus was initially identified throughnext-generation sequencing (NGS) and was suggested to have a possible zoonoticorigin. Till date, detailed morphology and ultrastructure of this virus remainincompletely understood.
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