SARS-CoV-2 and the snake venom “hypothesis”
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I go a lot of DMs on Twitter about the “documentary” about the Snake Venom, I could not be bothered to debunk the bullshit, because it would take too much time. Gladly, someone else did, and this is just me, signal boosting because the author did an excellent job. All credits go to him.
Below is the original Twitter thread, and I will just copy, and paste here for easier reading. My own additions at the end.
I think everyone is up to speed on the fact that no venom has ever been detected in municipal water or remdesivir during the pandemic. This is just reckless speculation camouflaging legitimate concerns over the spike protein having SHORT peptide sequences related to Cobra.
This is better known as the SEB domain in Spike because it shares more homology with SEB than Cobra Toxin. Can we call Spike protein a fully functional Venom as a result of this? No! Here is why.
https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/articles/10.5802/crbiol.8/
Give the Cobra genome project paper a read. You'll notice that venoms usually consist of 50-200 molecules that work in concert to kill you. Full length peptides (60-90aa) that fold properly. Not just a 7-10aa stretch that looks like a small piece of it.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-019-0559-8
While venom has very emotive overtones in our society, not all venoms are poison. It is often the dose and the route of administration that makes the difference.
Bee Venom being used for treatment of SARs-CoV-2. "VENOM!!!!"
Bee Venom—A Potential Complementary Medicine Candidate for SARS-CoV-2 Infections
Snake venom phospholipase A 2 being used to block SARs-CoV-2 from binding to ACE2. "VENOM!!!"
Components of venom are not a venom. Components of components of venom are not a venom. Protein folding via disulfide bridges is critical with venom peptides. When you simply take a short amino acid stretch from a protein, you fail to replicate these secondary structures.
Route of administration matters. Your stomach wrecks most peptides. Snakes bypass this with injection... kinda like a spike vax. Many of the symptoms of venoms are broad just like COViD. But this is because venoms are rarely 1 compound.
Ddimer elevation-not specific to C19 infection. Clotting-not specific. Loss of taste and smell-not specific Cytokine storms-not specific. This is pleiotropic symptomatology. Just because venoms and inflammatory viruses produce the same symptoms does not lead to 1 conclusion.
Spike protein has 7-10 amino acids that rhyme (not identical) with amino acids found in 60-90 amino acid long peptides found in venoms that have hundreds of components and genes involved in their synthesis. This is like saying "Theirs" and "The IRS" are the same... (pun intended)
I believe the SEB domain has clinical significance (mutated in omicron). I also realize this is still hypothetical. Weaponizing the story into "venom in the water&remdesivir" is hyperbolic grand standing when you have no data to support it being in either
In conclusion, you will see authors use terms like "neurotoxic-like" to signify that they are speaking to an incomplete mimetic of the molecule that may or may not embody the full length molecules function. This language is used because there is big diff between short sequence..
And known function. We know C19 has a superantigen SEB domain, Not full length SEB. Cheng et al have done a lot of work to characterize this domain as being responsible for cytokine storms in MISC. "venom in H20/Remdesivir" is return served Fear Porn. Noble lies are not noble
His thread ends here. Below are my own thoughts.
This is my own addition, while there is some validity to the nAChR idea, the reason nicotine works so well is because it is a inhibitor of NF-kb, one of the first steps the virus takes, specially when things go south.
The reason smokers suffered way less impact from the virus, is another, it is nicotine, plus another 2 compounds inside the cigarette, specifically cigarette)
When people talk about the venom aspect, they often talk about, and quote, PLA2/sPLA2, but they forget to look further, unconnected dots. What is the most common cause of Covid deaths, and sequelae, specially POST-Covid ? Secondary infections, especially bacterial ones.
Secretory Phospholipase A2 in Patients with Infected Pancreatic Necroses in Acute Pancreatitis
You get my point. There are more explanations than one, and they are scientifically based.
A short post about something else coming later today, probably. About the cover for this post, sorry, had to do it lol.
Thank you for this. Rolled my eyes when I saw the"snake venom" crapola going around. You are generous to call it a hypothesis!
Great tweet thread, thank you.