Kevin McKernan Profile picture
Cannabis Genome Project,2011. Developed the SOLiD sequencer. R&D lead Human Genome Project at MIT/WIBR. Founder- Medicinal Genomics

Apr 15, 2022, 14 tweets

Venomics to Snakes On a Plane.
Snake Oil or Venom?

This topic maybe toxic but it's largely a function of poor scientific communication and sticking to proper definitions.

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.
comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/biologies/arti…

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.
nature.com/articles/s4158…

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!!!!"

frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

Snake venom phospholipase A 2 being used to block SARs-CoV-2 from binding to ACE2.
"VENOM!!!"
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34714362/

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
osf.io/bcsa6/

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

Share this Scrolly Tale with your friends.

A Scrolly Tale is a new way to read Twitter threads with a more visually immersive experience.
Discover more beautiful Scrolly Tales like this.

Keep scrolling