a fundamental question¶

Whoa. This answers a fundamental question: what exactly is ORF8 doing?? We already knew that ORF8 mutants we're associated with decreased COVID severity, both in the acute phase and in long COVID.

Original paper for those interested: https://t.co/3Q89v2Z4wQ https://t.co/KqBbiOnkZ7 Quick background: Every one of your cells has your entire genome. Different cells do different things, based on regulating which genes are actually used, when, and how. This is called epigenetics. One of the ways they do this is with histones, the proteins that package the DNA. For example, if part of the DNA is tightly packed with histones, your cell generally can't express the genes in that part of the DNA. So you can modify the histones to regulate gene expression. SARS-CoV-2 has a gene, ORF8, which we've known for a while is associated with severity--in both the acute and persistent phases. ORF8 mutants don't cause as much harm. These researchers demonstrated that ORF8 encodes a protein that mimics histones. Meaning on a molecular level, it affects gene expression in its hosts: a thing we also already knew, without knowing how.