On the 3.2kbytes in Influenza A
bunniestudios.com
bunniestudios.com
Could anyone expand a bit on this subject? I found this completely fascinating, but I'm having trouble finding further reading on the underlying mechanics of "ports", as the article calls them.
So given your body is made of different types of cells, viruses only have the keys to certain cells - where there's enough in common in their RNA to mate. This is kind of what's meant by the ports the author describes- H1N1 has enough similar encoding to the cells in your throat, nose and sinuses to mate and cause mutations.
Second, I think the "port" is not that the RNA is similar, but rather the virus has a protein key on it's surface that physically allows it to enter the cell.
In the micro world things move by atomic forces. In this case the virus has a protein on it's surface that is the same shape as a protein on the surface of the cell. The same shape means the electrical charges line up, and the virus is drawn toward the cell by electrostatic forces.
If the charge pattern does not match up, the virus will not be drawn toward the cell. Remember the virus has no ability to move.
As a side note H1N1 means HA type 1, and Neuraminidase (NA) type 1. NA is a necessary protein for Influenza to leave the cell after replication.
Would it be possible or practical to make a filter media, or throat spray using sialic acid to catch H1N1 viruses and fool them into 'thinking' they have reached a target location? The goal being to selectively trap or destroy as the virus attempts to enter a fake target cell. Could something like this help prevent infection or help to quell severe infections?
Would this be the computer analogous metaphor for a 'honey pot'.
Actually, the way that the current antivirals work is sort of the opposite. When the new viral particles are emerging from their host cell they end up stuck on the sialic acid molecules on the surface. That's where the Neuraminidase (the "N" of H1N1) comes in. It's job is to cut the new virus particles free of the host cell that produced them. If you block that, you can effectively stall the infection before it gets started.
It doesn't fool them like you suggested, but rather it catches and tangles the viruses and physically prevents them from infecting a cell.
DNA : Program stored on disk
RNA : Program loaded in RAM
Amino Acid : Pixel in a frame buffer
Protein : Image output from the RNA program
Organism : Computer with an IP address
Functional : An application which listens to a particular socket
Group of CellsEXCEPT that proteins are 3-dimensional entities. Their exact 3D configuration is encoded in the amino acid sequence encoded by the DNA. We still don't fully understand how this encoding works, but it is, in effect, the most awesome compression algorithm imaginable!
DNA can only have four bases (ACGT), so each DNA base can only encode 2 bits of information. 20 amino acids could be encoded in 4 and a bit bits, not 20 bits (actually, you need a stop code, so 21 codes are needed).
As it is, DNA uses 3 bases, 6 bits to encode each amino acid, so there is a little redundancy. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_code#RNA_codon_table for the mapping.
Proteins are 3D entities, but their shape is determined by the amino acids, which are determined by the DNA - so there is no awesome compression here. To put it another way, the words "booktitle:Dune" encode a novel, which is much more than 14 bytes, but I cannot encode any arbitrary stream of bytes in this way.
And clearly I need to install a firewall to close some of those open ports.
In other words: yes you're right, and it's already being done.
There are literally thousands of strains that have been sequenced.
It's worth remembering that in almost all cases, it's not the flu that kills you - it's the onset pneumonia, diarrhea and dehydration that takes you down. The best survivalist method is to remind yourself how to treat cold/flu symptoms, stock up on meds, and sweat it out. Helps if your health insurance is up to date too. :)