Question

1) What is the genetic material in Coronavirus (also known as 2019-nCov or COVID-19)? How many nucleotides does the genome of this virus contain? Based on what we discussed in the lecture, which CRISPR/Cas system do you think has the potential to degrade the Coronavirus genome in infected humans to treat the disease? (Hint: read the required reading on Coronavirus sequence and refer to lectures to answer these questions).

Answer 1

1. Genome of corona virus contain single positive stranded RNA as genetic material.

2. Corona virus has 30kb (Kilo base) with approx 30738 nucleotide.

3. Many human genetic disease can be cured with CRISPR/cas technology. This technology let us edit any genetic mutation and cure the disease virus cause. Currently this technique is being used to experiment on HIV virus. This technique can cut the sequence of DNA of HIV and stop the infection. In similar way CRISPR technique can be used to cure from corona virus. Corona virus is a RNA virus so CAS 9 which is used to cut HIV genome can be used but with some different system approach. Ribonucleotide complexes is formed using CRISPR RNAs and Cas protein to recognize nucleic acid of virus. CRISPR/cas system has two classes with 6 type.

The type III systems target the mRNA of virus rather than DNA genome which may make these systems substantiallycapable of targeting RNA-based virus genomes and as corona virus is RNA virus this system seems much capable of targeting that.