The Coronavirus

Obviously, SARS CoV-2 (“the coronavirus”) and the disease it causes, COVID-19, is the biggest news story of the past year. In fact, it’s more than just a news story - it’s affected all of our lives in some way.

Being that this is Biology class, it makes sense that we take a close look at the science involved with the virus. So, let’s dive into the story of the coronavirus - from the perspective of science.

You’ll notice that much of what we learned in Unit 3 is comes up in these videos! For example:

• Ribosomes
• Endoplasmic reticulum
• DNA and RNA
• Cell membrane
• Proteins

First, we will take a look at how the virus infects our cells and why it makes us feel ill (the symptoms of the disease).

The previous video was from all the way back in March, 2020. Even before that, scientists were working on the vaccine for the coronavirus. This next video tells part of the story of how the vaccine was developed so quickly.

Finally, in this brief video, we will take a closer look at how the vaccine works.

How cool is that? What is also cool is that you know about many of the structures that are important in both how the virus infects us and how the vaccine works. As I mentioned before, you know what ribosomes are, you know what the endoplasmic reticulum is, you know what DNA and RNA are. Now you also see a very real life example of why these structures are important. Plus, there are some topics that you may be familiar with but that we will learn more about next semester, such as:

• Immune response
• Inflamation
• White blood cells
• More details about DNA and RNA

As we learn more about these topics, we’ll discuss how they are related to topic of the coronavirus.