Get to know COVID-19: What is Coronavirus?

You may know how COVID-19 looks like based on the images that have been spreading all over internet. 

 

Yes, like this. 

But do you really know what what is Coronavirus? Where this virus comes from?  How do they infect the people? How this outbreak started? We will discover everything about coronavirus in this Get to Know COVID-19 series. 

Why is it named corona? If you notice the crown-like spikes on the outer surface of the virus, yes, that's the corona.The nucleocaspid is made of a protein shell known as a caspid and containing the viral nucleic acids that have helical or tubular shape. This viruses sized 65-125 nm in diameter. They contain a single-stranded RNA as a nucleic acid that ranging from 26 to 32kbs in length. In fact, the mutation rates of RNA viruses are greater than DNA viruses, because it has an efficient adaption process for survival. The genome codes for at least four main structural proteins:

Spike (S)

Membrane(M)

Envelope(E)

Nucleocaspid(N)

Coronaviruses are one of the virus that belong to Coronaviridae family in Nidovirales order. There are four main sub-groupings for coronaviruses which is alpha, beta, gamma and delta. According to Centeres for Disease Control and Prevention website that discussed about Human Coronavirus Types, the common human coronaviruses that infect people around the world are:

1. 229E - alpha coronavirus

2. NL63 - alpha coronavirus

3. OC43 - beta coronavirus

4. HKU1 - beta coronavirus

In some circumstance, there are possibility the coronaviruses that infect animals evolve and make people sick and become new human coronavirus. Just like the case happened in Wuhan, China.