Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 104 posts

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#51

Post by asdff »

porknubbins wrote: post #45
nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

After learning CS I can’t help but see biology as crazy algorithms run on a living computer. Like someone was thinking “how can we match possibly any shape of invader? Screw it cells are cheap we’ll brute force randomly try them all.”

Tons of biology can be modeled mathematically strikingly well, and most of that was figured out a long time ago. Sewall Wright was developing graphical models of evolution in the 1920s.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#52

Post by projektfu »

dTal wrote: post #23
Tomte wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do journalists write like this? The New Yorker is known for that style, it may even be the prime example of it. People who don't like that style are not the audience. And there are many people who like it. It's like asking why Linux Weekly News never runs poetry. Because it's not that kind of publication.

And what a shallow, frenetic dystopia it would be if nobody even attempted to write compelling longform anymore. Remember, 90% of everything is crap. Imagine reading 3 disappointing novels and concluding that novels, as a format, were a waste of time! (Or worse - being unable to appreciate a good novel because you're too impatient for it to get to the exciting bits!)

Compelling means that the reader doesn’t give up after a few paragraphs. I like long form, like I have subscribed to Harper’s since forever, but sometimes an article is just extended and not more interesting.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#53

Post by dd36 »

Entaroadun87 wrote: post #3

Really like this analogy: It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular m…

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/science/mosaicism-dna-gen...

That’s not exactly true.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/science/chimera-bone-marr...

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#54

Post by refurb »

dTal wrote: post #29

I am blown away by this casually dropped metaphor: >As the virus spreads unchecked through the body, it drags a destructive immune reaction behind it. Individuals with COVID-19 face the same challenge as nations during the pandemic: if they can’t contain small sites of infection early—so that a targeted response can root them out—they end up mounting interventions so large that the shock inflicts its own damage.

It should also be added that an out of control infection is not the only reason why you end up with an immune response that harms the host. It's quite possible to get a severe immune response to an infection that's quite limited.

Kind of similar to anaphylaxis to bee stings. The venom was never any threat to a human, but the immune response sure can be.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#55

Post by refurb »

Entaroadun87 wrote: post #3

Really like this analogy: It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular m…

The really mind blowing thing is not just that DNA encodes everything for a living organism, but that it also has all the necessary elements to control expression so the right thing gets made at the right time in the right place.

The fun part is that it's not like DNA is just expressed, it needs to be "unwound" from it's natural state as a highly dense structure. Elements within the cell actually regulate the unwinding itself, that's one way genes are turn on/off.

And in addition, once DNA is unwound, split into a single strand and transcribed into RNA, the RNA itself becomes a regulating mechanism through siRNA. So the very act of transcribing DNA has regulating effect up the transcribing itself.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#56

Post by tehjoker »

projektfu wrote: post #50
nextos wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing some lab & modeling research on this, and it's more complex. I think it's a non-linear dynamics problem. In a nutshell, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) does block interferon response by using molecular mimics. Some of the proteins encoded in the virus are really similar to proteins in the interferon pathway, so this is not surprising. Still pretty unexplored and a nice route towards finding treatments. Now, the…

I’m a bit surprised by that statement about biology labs being hostile to mathematical models. Care to go more in depth?

bio people are not frequently math people and vice versa. The undergraduate departments make fun of each other. This is changing slowly. I suspect that a big part of the reason is that biology is complicated while math is good at dealing with distilling the behavior of a few essential elements.

When you start to find essential elements, they get mathified (look at DNA) but look how much experimental work it takes to do that? Scaling up experiments can also take some math, but once you figure out the trick, you just have a lot of experiments to run....

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#57

Post by vmception »

dTal wrote: post #29

I am blown away by this casually dropped metaphor: >As the virus spreads unchecked through the body, it drags a destructive immune reaction behind it. Individuals with COVID-19 face the same challenge as nations during the pandemic: if they can’t contain small sites of infection early—so that a targeted response can root them out—they end up mounting interventions so large that the shock inflicts its own damage.

Makes me imagine little cells arguing about whether it was worth shutting down the system lol

“Those cells die everyday!”

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#58

Post by kitd »

jcims wrote: post #9
Entaroadun87 wrote: post #3

Really like this analogy: It is a somewhat astonishing fact of life that the exact same DNA is shared by every cell in your body, from the skin to the brain; those cells differ in appearance and function because, in each of them, a molecular gizmo “transcribes” some DNA segments rather than others into molecules of single-stranded RNA. These bits of RNA are in turn used as the blueprints for proteins, the molecular m…

'Molecular machines' is not an overstatement. Here's an example of some of them working in harmony to maintain an essential electrochemical gradient across the lipid bilayer that encapsulates the mitochondria: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQmTKxI4Wn4 It's a 7 minute video, if you only have a little time, skip around, but make sure you listen to the part starting at 6:17. DNA isn't just the blueprint for the machin…

As a layman, I found "The Gene Machine" by Matt Ridley a fascinating exposition on how 'mechanical' genetics can be.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#59

Post by panabee »

nahuel0x wrote: post #35

This is mind blowing: > For the first half of the twentieth century, the going theory was that the invading element—the “antigen”—served as a template around which a corresponding antibody was molded. Only in 1955 did scientists discover the much stranger truth. It turned out that the cells that produce antibodies—called B cells, because they were first discovered in the bursa of Fabricius, an organ that does for bir…

extremely naive, dumb questeion: could cancer cells stem from some errant mutation of B cells? this might help explain why cancer cells grow uncontrollably and also escape detection by the immune system.

Re: How the Coronavirus Hacks the Immune System

#60

Post by ReptileMan »

FooHentai wrote: post #10
ane wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of reporting interleaved with storytelling in a really weird voice is frustrating. Why do journalists write like this? What purpose does this word salad serve? I can do this myself! "On a bald September day, a man walks into a barber shop, languishes at the occupied seats, and voilà, while sensing upcoming bowel movements, he discovers the next great theory of economics."

This is 'Long Form Journalism'. The 'dip in, dip out' paragraph structure is a dead giveaway. Not always what you're looking for but it can be a good way of cracking into a subject you're unfamiliar with, or a good way of merging the human element with something that would otherwise be quite dry. By no means a substitute for regular news, but a good complement to it.

The problem is not the long form per se, but its misuse. Since usually journalists try to implant human interest stories etc where they don't fit.

Long form is good if you have something long to say. Trying to construct a story where there isn't one frustrates the reader.

I enjoy in depth exposes, but I don't need the alice, bob and malory viewpoint anchoring.

This is my general attitude towards this style of writing, not this specific piece.

Post reply on HN