This is cool because it can help quickly determine structures if the virus mutates. However, the obsession with structural biology isn’t necessarily optimal, because we’re talking about shapes of things (analog, constantly changing) instead of discrete states of molecular circuits. Check out the book “wetware: a computer in every living cell” —- cells figured out logic long before we did. Treatments which operate from a structural paradigm, like small molecules, antibodies, and vaccines, are analog. Treatments which operate from a sequence / switching / circuit paradigm are digital.<p>The digital solution is stronger: delete Coronavirus RNA. This isn’t dependent on shape of some molecule and how some other molecule docks with that inside a molecular blender. Genome engineering targets sequences directly, works with novel viruses right away, tolerates mutations with wobble base pairs, works in immunocomprimised patients, has potentially zero side effects, etc etc<p>I applaud these efforts but implore you to consider: why throw a fancy molecular wrench into the virus machine when you can instead set the “virus switch” to “off?”<p>If anyone’s gonna grok the benefit of digital over analog, it ought to be the Hacker News community. The hardest part is delivery, we need to affordably mass produce nano particles with the CRISPR DNA inside. That’s the number one thing holding back biotech from curing many diseases including this one: AAV is the standard vector but it only works once before you’re immune to the gene therapy.<p>here’s a link to a repo (WIP) to target nCoV with CRISPR
<a href="https://github.com/bionicles/coronavirus" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bionicles/coronavirus</a><p>If you can help mass produce nanoparticles with microfluidics or self assembly please email me bion@bitpharma.com<p>Folding At Home is cool. Is folding and shape-medicine the best way to cure human disease? How do we know the answer to that unless we try to program cells like we program computers?